Wine disassembly and reverse engineering rules.

Jesse Allen the3dfxdude at gmail.com
Mon Aug 6 15:06:04 CDT 2007


On 8/6/07, Stefan Dösinger <stefandoesinger at gmx.at> wrote:
> Am Montag, 6. August 2007 21:02 schrieb James Hawkins:
> > "The reverse engineer is required to ask permission first, however."
> >
> > ...good luck with that.
> Asking is easy :-)
>
> Does the reverse engineer have to get permission? If he does need the blessing
> of the creator of the reverse engineered software/device, then the whole
> interoperability clause would be pointless. (note that I didn't read the
> DMCA, nor that page since disassembling Windows is pointless for me and I do
> not really speak assembler)
>
>

While living in America and going to school seeking a computer related
degree, I had to take an ethics class on the industry. I did a
presentation on the DMCA. Yes, the DMCA seems to be written such that
any reverse engineering has to be done with the permission of the
author or done in a very academic sense. Definitely no black hats...

Now, where the DMCA concerns us, is whether you engage in
circumvention technology. As far as Wine as concerned, it is not being
written for that, and we don't really engage in reverse engineering in
the sense of the way the DMCA is written for or against. But then
again a court can totally change the meaning here.



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