From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Dec 22 0:43:27 2000 From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Dec 22 00:43:26 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mailhost.stack.nl (vaak.stack.nl [131.155.140.140]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C590137B400 for ; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 00:43:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from toad.stack.nl (toad.ipv6.stack.nl [2001:610:1108:5010:200:e8ff:fe55:346d]) by mailhost.stack.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 83EDC14F15 for ; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 09:43:24 +0100 (CET) Received: by toad.stack.nl (Postfix, from userid 816) id 181F596EC; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 09:43:24 +0100 (CET) Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT In-Reply-To: <000901c06be9$00910570$aa240018@cx443070b> from Jeremiah Gowdy at "Dec 21, 2000 11:30:03 pm" To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 09:43:24 +0100 (CET) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL60 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <20001222084324.181F596EC@toad.stack.nl> From: marcov@stack.nl (Marco van de Voort) Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...] > > Trouble is there is no consistency in the rulings. > > United States Code Title 17 Chapter 12 Section 1201 Subsection (f) > > My basic interpretation of this is, if you legally own a copy of the > software (firmware is software), you can legally reverse engineer the > software for the purpose of achiving interoperability. Therefore, if you > own a piece of hardware, and you have no driver for the hardware, or the > driver provided is not acceptable, you have the right to reverse engineer > the firmware in order to write your own driver, thereby achiving > interoperability. Exactly the same in Europe, only the sharing parts are new for me. The difference seems to be: The problem is that in the US, it is legal to override this with the licensing conditions. In Europe this right is inalienable. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message