7 ms·

So, basically poking your competitors software with a stick, being an effort to understand its inner workings, is reverse-engineering. When prohibited by EULA i

by DenisM 9y ago

So, basically poking your competitors software with a stick, being an effort to understand its inner workings, is reverse-engineering. When prohibited by EULA it becomes a breach of contract. It does seem overly broad, this line of reasoning left unchecked would imply no third-party replacement parts for any device, because you need to understand the working to make a part... On the other hand if I am creating some new technology, inhave now gained a very effective tool to fight the copy-cats. At least the ones who couldn’t setup a shell company for this exact purpose.

phkahler 9y ago
>> So, basically poking your competitors software with a stick, being an effort to understand its inner workings, is reverse-engineering. When prohibited by EULA it becomes a breach of contract. Correct. The problem with that is you might hire someone who has lots of experience with a product in order to develop a competing one. You have that person tell you how the new product needs to behave. This is essentially doing the same thing, but who is violating the "agreement"? At the time the employee learned about the product, they were a legitimate user with no intent of reverse engineering. They may or may not have personally accepted the EULA (it may have been installed by the IT folks). When they go to the new company, who becomes responsible to any alleged wrong doing? I guess I'm saying there is a grey area where things boil down to intent rather than action, and that makes me think it's wrong (on top of the more obvious issues). On the upside, IIRC there are countries where this activity would be legal and the enforcement of the EULA terms against it are unenforceable. IANAL, so find said country(s) and development practices to circumvent this problem on your own. I think it's unfortunate, but it's exactly the kind of stupid problem that pushed RMS to start the GNU project.

by DenisM 9y ago

phkahler 9y ago

>> So, basically poking your competitors software with a stick, being an effort to understand its inner workings, is reverse-engineering. When prohibited by EULA it becomes a breach of contract. Correct. The problem with that is you might hire someone who has lots of experience with a product in order to develop a competing one. You have that person tell you how the new product needs to behave. This is essentially doing the same thing, but who is violating the "agreement"? At the time the employee learned about the product, they were a legitimate user with no intent of reverse engineering. They may or may not have personally accepted the EULA (it may have been installed by the IT folks). When they go to the new company, who becomes responsible to any alleged wrong doing? I guess I'm saying there is a grey area where things boil down to intent rather than action, and that makes me think it's wrong (on top of the more obvious issues). On the upside, IIRC there are countries where this activity would be legal and the enforcement of the EULA terms against it are unenforceable. IANAL, so find said country(s) and development practices to circumvent this problem on your own. I think it's unfortunate, but it's exactly the kind of stupid problem that pushed RMS to start the GNU project.