[License-discuss] Reverse Engineering and Open Source Licenses

[John Cowan]

thufir scripsit:

> I don't think it's necessary to write a PDF about it, but, still,
> interesting.  IMHO this is bad policy, a bad law, but there you are.
> Did this change at one point?  I thought that reverse engineering
> was found to be legal, at least in the US?  And this Bowers v
> Baystate set a precedent where it could be prohibited!?

Frankly, I have zero sympathy for Baystate's behavior.  Bowers offered to
license his technology on commercial terms, and they told him they thought
they could do it themselves.  They then licensed a copy of his work,
accepting in the process the license's prohibition on reverse engineering,
which they then proceeded to reverse engineer.  When Bowers sued, they
tried to claim that this part of the contract didn't apply to them.
Legally, they could have been right; ethically, their position is
bargain-basement.  Hard cases, as the saying is, make bad law, and now
we're stuck with it.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
But that, he realized, was a foolish thought; as no one knew better than
he that the Wall had no other side.
        --Arthur C. Clarke, "The Wall of Darkness"