Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sat, 15 Feb 2003 04:37:08 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sat, 15 Feb 2003 04:37:08 -0500 Received: from warden-p.diginsite.com ([208.29.163.248]:4063 "HELO warden.diginsite.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Sat, 15 Feb 2003 04:37:07 -0500 From: David Lang To: Adrian Bunk Cc: Larry McVoy , Jamie Lokier , Larry McVoy , Rik van Riel , Andrea Arcangeli , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 01:46:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: openbkweb-0.0 In-Reply-To: <20030215073615.GS20159@fs.tum.de> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2306 Lines: 47 On Sat, 15 Feb 2003, Adrian Bunk wrote: > Current German copyright law says you are allowed to reverse engineer > under certain circumstances a program you are a licensee of to produce > independent programs that interoperate with this proprietary program. > Otherwise it would often be impossible to develop software like Samba > that has to interoperate with proprietary products - how easy would it > be to forbid something like this in the licence terms of the proprietary > program. Since the licensee is often in a very weak position compared to > the company selling the software current German copyright law says that > any contractual appointments that disallow the allowed cases of reverse > engineering are void. Adrian, the key point here is that you are allowed to reverse engineer anything you are a licensee of. I'll bet there are also laws preventing a company from refusing to sell a copy of whatever to someone who would reverse engineer it. however there's nothing that states that a company that gives free copies of whatever to a charity they must give a free copy to people who want to reverse engineer it. in the case of bitkeeper the 'charity' is opensource software. Larry will (and probably must) sell a license to whoever wants one and the most he can do is to refuse to give you any discount above his published standard rates. Larry does not have to give you a copy of it for free for the purpose of you reverse engineering it. under the law you are allowed to reverse engineer anything you have a legal license to. unless you give bitmover money you do not automaticaly have a legal license to use bitkeeper if you work on a version control package or for a company that does. Larry has shown by his actions that he is willing to make additional licenses available for free in many cases (all the folks working for redhat who are useing bitkeeper are proof of that). yes Larry is being a bit paranoid, but you have to admit that judging from the posts on the subject there are a lot of people out to get him :-) David Lang - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/