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From: Mikael Karpberg <karpen@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Message-Id: <199702132346.AAA03462@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Subject: Re: MIME applications for FreeBSD
To: se@freebsd.org (Stefan Esser)
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 00:46:23 +0100 (MET)
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <19970213225745.YE06273@x14.mi.uni-koeln.de> from Stefan Esser at "Feb 13, 97 10:57:45 pm"
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According to Stefan Esser:
> On Feb 13, terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) wrote:
> > "We" is very broad here.  Most Europeans, especially Germans, are
> > not prevented from reverse engineering file formats or other
> > interfaces. 
> 
> This is not true, actually!
> 
> There are strict restrictions, with only few exceptions.
> 
> Looking at the machine code of program binaries is not 
> allowed (and will be prosecuted) in general, for example.
> 
> Interfaces may be reverse engineered ONLY for the purpose
> of adding value to a product, which you then may sell. 
> 
> But publishing the results (eg. in the form of source code 
> that uses that interface) is prohibited.

Well... One could always make someone documment the format by reverese
enginering, or looking at the MS example code. No code, just the format
of the files. Then just sending the documentation of the format to some
other people, ought to make receipents "clean" enough to be able to write
a BSD-licenced source from that, which can grok the format, and output
ascii/ps/pdf files. No?

  /Mikael