[License-discuss] Reverse Engineering and Open Source Licenses

[cowan at ccil.org]

Thufir Hawat scripsit:

> Does the same logic apply to widgets?  If so, that would, potentially,
> kill after-market car parts, which, if I'm not mistaken, are reverse
> engineered from the original.

Cars and their parts are sold, not licensed.  If purchasers of
proprietary software would insist on buying software rather than licensing
it, the problem wouldn't arise.  Fortunately, books are also sold --
at least so far, though nothing stops book publishers from putting
the same sort of notice into each copy of a book and gutting the
used-book market.

(I'm 56.  I think I've bought software exactly once, a boxed set of
Red Hat Linux back in 1999.  All the rest has been licensed under
either a proprietary or an open-source license.)

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
You're a brave man! Go and break through the lines, and remember while
you're out there risking life and limb through shot and shell,
we'll be in here thinking what a sucker you are!    --Rufus T. Firefly