[License-discuss] 3-clause BSD and reverse engineering

[Zluty Sysel]

On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 8:20 PM, Engel Nyst <engel.nyst at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 01/16/2015 07:44 AM, Zluty Sysel wrote:
> > "Reverse engineering, decompilation, and/or disassembly of software
> > provided in binary form under this license is prohibited."
>
> I'm wondering why you want this clause. Is the software in source form
> available under BSD or do you intend to make it available under this
> license? What purpose would this clause for the binary version solve?
>

I apologize. I submitted the wrong license with the wrong text in it. As
you mention it makes no sense to include a binary-only provision inside an
open source license.
But that raises a new and interesting question: since a BSD license does
not mandate the redistribution of the code, can the license itself impose
restrictions on the redistributions of binary files *generated by the
mentioned source code*? One example would be expressly forbidding reverse
engineering of those binary files.
I guess more broadly my question would be if an open source license for
code source files can include restrictions for files that result of
compiling said source code, or does the license only apply to the source
files themselves?

Thanks!

Zluty


>
>
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> Tools are accessible to the world. We have not found any authority for
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