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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Dear Colleagues;<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In the past I was involved in some full discussions concerning the issue ‘reverse engineering and open source licenses’. Although personally esteeming and inspiring, such discussions sometimes became a bit explosive:
If – at least – the LGPL-v2 indeed requires to allow the reverse engineering of those programs which use LGPL-v2 licensed components, then companies are not able to protect these ‘private’ programs against revealing the embedded business relevant secrets,
even if they do not distribute the corresponding source code. And – as far as I know – at least some companies have therefore forbidden to link essential programs against the LGPL-v2.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I have taken the view that this ‘rule of reverse engineering’ cannot be applied in case of distributing dynamically linkable programs. By arguing that way, I caused astonishment and dissents. But often, I was also asked
to note down my argumentation, because some of my partners wanted to review it in detail. They had the hope to get a solution for conflict of using open source software compliantly and protecting their business relevant software.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">During the last two month, I had the pleasure to fulfill this request by writing the corresponding article. Now, I am indeed sure that all important open source licenses including the LGPL-v2 allow reverse engineering
only in case of distributing statically linked programs. Moreover: I am definitely sure, that none of these open source licenses requires to allow reverse engineering in case of distributing dynamically linkable programs and that particularly even the LGPL-v2
does not require reverse engineering in case of distributing dynamically linkable programs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Unfortunately, the deduction of this position had to become more complex than initially thought. But fortunately, it could preserve a straight-forward argumentation: After having started with a linguistic disambiguation
and transposing the license statements into a logical formula, it derives the results by using logic ways of inferring a conclusion. And this method is applied for the LGPL-v2, for the LGPL-v3, and for the other most important open source licenses. Hence,
for now, I – for myself - am indeed sure, that my argumentation is valid and mandatory.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But subjective certainty is not enough. As long as we do not have a legal decision, the best way to become sure is to invoke a discussion (and a consensus) by publishing the results. For that purpose, we decided, not
only to insert the analysis into the OSLiC, but to distribute that chapter also as an autonomous article (<a href="http://opensource.telekom.net/oslic/en/planning/results.html">http://opensource.telekom.net/oslic/en/planning/results.html</a> ). Thus, it is
also licensed under the der CC-BY-SA-3.0. So, feel free to use it, to modify it, and/or to share it. The sources of the pdf are part of the OSLiC repository (<a href="https://github.com/dtag-dbu/oslic/">https://github.com/dtag-dbu/oslic/</a> ).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">We, Deutsche Telekom AG and I, Karsten Reincke, are indeed hoping to having contributed something which simplifies the compliant use of open source software.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">With best regards any many thanks for all the encouraging discussions - especially to Mrs. Karen Copenhaven, Mr. Armin Taldur, and Mr. Claus Peter Wiedemann Sincerely Your Karsten Reincke<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Consolas">---<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Consolas">Deutsche Telekom Technik GmbH / Cloud Infrastructure<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Consolas">Karsten Reincke, PMP®, Senior Expert Key Projects - Open Stack Complexity- and Compliancemanagement<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Consolas">[display complete signatur:
</span><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Consolas"><a href="http://opensource.telekom.net/kreincke/kr-dtag-sign-de.txt"><span lang="EN-US">http://opensource.telekom.net/kreincke/kr-dtag-sign-en.txt</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Consolas">
]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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