Wine disassembly and reverse engineering rules.

[Peter Dons Tychsen]

On Sun, 2007-08-05 at 09:58 +0200, Kai Blin wrote:
> On Sunday 05 August 2007 04:23:15 Peter Dons Tychsen wrote:
> 
> > It was regarding the fact that it is not allowed to disassemble and
> > reverse engineer Microsoft DLLs. I understand this part, as their
> > license prohibits it (EULA).
> 
> Please note that "reverse engineering by disassembly" is not the same 
> as "reverse engineering by black box testing". The former is not only 
> disallowed by many license agreements, it's actually a violation of copyright 
> in most (western) countries.
> 
> Reverse engineering by black box testing is an established and legal method in 
> industry. Wine uses this method extensively by writing test cases.
> 
> >
> > However, i would be more clear if someone would make these rules
> > commonly available on the WineHQ website.
> 
> [Omitting a quote about disassembly being useless]
> 
> > This should probably be fixed. It should make it crystal clear was is
> > allowed and what is not. This would help avoid situation like the one
> > mentioned above.
> 
> It's also not allowed to break other laws while developing software. Where 
> would you draw the line? Disassembling software is (almost always) illegal. 
> Killing people is illegal. Should both be in the development guide? I would 
> assume common sense would tell people that they should only do things that 
> are legal.
> 
> > Another problem is that i want to introduce something which i am not
> > sure is covered or not by what is "not allowed".
> >
> > I want to introduce a function which can check if SendMessage() or
> > PostMessage() was the reason a message ended up in a Proc handler.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > I don't think there is a problem as i am just using documented APIs from
> > MSDN, but since it includes looking at the call stack, i was curious if
> > there might be a legal problem.
> 
> If you are just using the documented API, this is just how Wine tests are 
> done. 
> 
> > I don't want to put the idea to use or release it if it in any way is
> > illegal.
> 
> This is the common sense I was talking about before. Thank you for asking.
> 
> > Please think long and hard before you reply.
> 
> The usual disclaimer about how I'm not a lawyer and can't give legal advice 
> applies, of course. But a rule of thumb is: "If you never looked at 
> disassembled code and you are using tests using the Windows APIs to determine 
> how the API you're interested in works, you're fine."
> 
> Hope that helps,
> Kai
> 

Thanks for your comments Kai.

> It's also not allowed to break other laws while developing software. Where 
> would you draw the line? Disassembling software is (almost always) illegal. 
> Killing people is illegal. Should both be in the development guide? I would 
> assume common sense would tell people that they should only do things that 
> are legal.
I thing killing is a bit off topic :-)

However i do get your point about making it clear. It would be difficult
to handle. OK, but changing the text i referred to would be a good start
though. 

The text could be changed to (or similar):

"Disassembling native Windows DLLs is not allowed in the Wine project
due to legal implications. However, this does not change much, as
disassembling native Windows DLLs is virtually always useless, as as
technique disassemly is usually used to find out why the application is
crashing in an otherwise unexplainable way."