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Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 14:05:23 -0800
From: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
To: Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de>
Cc: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>, Rik van Riel <riel@imladris.surriel.com>,
       Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>,
       Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@e-mind.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: openbkweb-0.0
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On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 10:11:27PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 08:13:37AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> >...
> > We'd view reverse engineering the protocol as falling under the "you're
> > working on a competing implementation".  
> >...
> 
> If a clause in a license forbids a licensee to use or decompile the
> program to gather the information needed for independendly developed
> programs to interoperate with this program current German copyright law
> says that this clause is void in Germany.  :-)

Please show me the case law which says we have to give you our technology,
for free, and we do not have the right to say "no way unless you agree to
not reverse engineer".

Lots of law says "if you paid for this product, the seller may not impose
the following restrictions" with reverse engineering being amongst those.

I do not have any data which says that the same law applies in the case of
a no charge copy of the software, do you?
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 
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