From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Dec 21 22:50:24 2000 From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 21 22:50:22 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from illustrious.cnchost.com (illustrious.concentric.net [207.155.252.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5AEA237B400 for ; Thu, 21 Dec 2000 22:50:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from buffy (w072.z064003114.lax-ca.dsl.cnc.net [64.3.114.72]) by illustrious.cnchost.com id BAA19293; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 01:50:19 -0500 (EST) [ConcentricHost SMTP Relay 1.10] Errors-To: From: "SteveB" To: "Drew Eckhardt" , Subject: RE: FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 22:52:11 -0800 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-reply-to: <200012220617.eBM6H8h13242@chopper.Poohsticks.ORG> Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Trouble is there is no consistency in the rulings. Hardware decisions in general are mirrors of software cases. Hardware reverse engineering tends to be legal. But with software they use Clean programmer, Dirty programmer. In other words you can write a program exactly like another, if you can prove you never saw the other program. If you saw the similar program you are dirty. The weird thing is your Marketing people can see the other program and tell you what to do. That's legal. Steve B. > -----Original Message----- > From: drew@chopper.Poohsticks.ORG > [mailto:drew@chopper.Poohsticks.ORG]On > Behalf Of Drew Eckhardt > Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 10:17 PM > To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG > Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT > > > In message <200012220125.eBM1PYp10444@jhs.muc.de>, > jhs@jhs.muc.de writes: > >Examiners at the European Patent Office http://www.epo.org tell me: > > Reverse engineering is legal in Europe, Illegal in USA. > > Back in the early nineties, Nintendo sued some one in America > for reverse engineering the circuit included in every cartridge and > using what they learned to sell cartridges without buying the > protection chip from them. > > Nintendo lost. > > If you dig deeper, I believe you'll find cases from the > mainframe era > with similar rulings. > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message