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Yes - I think clean reverse engineering is still possible in this model, but it really limits a lot of what software re-implementation people do day to day. For

by bri3d 9y ago

Yes - I think clean reverse engineering is still possible in this model, but it really limits a lot of what software re-implementation people do day to day. For example, if I were making a spreadsheet application like Google Sheets, I'd have to build a repository of customer Excel documents and validate that my formula compiler output the same data as was present in the document, without ever opening Excel to quickly check an output or asking someone to open Excel and produce a spreadsheet containing specific inputs/outputs - because either one would be considered EULA-breaking reverse engineering (at least by my reading). That's scary and I actually think it has broader implications for "normal" products as less EULA concern is applied there than in obvious legal minefields like emulators.

sverhagen 9y ago
I feel like "grandpa is gonna talk", and I'm not even that old. But "when I grew up", "reverse engineering" was still explained as an incredibly hard thing, infinitely harder than just engineering. It was said to be where one team would go into a room with a device, send out a spec, that a different team would then take to implement, they'd never meet, the implementing team would never get to see or touch the original device (pretty much what someone in a sibling thread described as their own experience, rather than me just hearing this being explained). With all that in mind, I'd say that WPL (the defendant) pretty much missed the whole point of reverse engineering...
- rahimnathwani 9y ago
  That's 'clean room' reverse engineering. Not all reverse engineering has to be like that.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    Based on the descriptions in the article, aside from isolating the teams, this is very much what they did. The difference being that they didn't have a second team dis-assemble and actually reverse engineer the product to write a formal spec for how it functioned. Instead they did A/B testing to ensure that the output of the known product produced the same output as the reference implementation, reportedly without examining how the black box worked.
- bri3d 9y ago
  Yes - this was the point I was making in the last sentence of my comment. People writing things like emulators think about "reverse engineering" and take clean-room precautions. People writing things like spreadsheets think about "what does the competitor product do" and "competitive analysis" and type things into competing products and observe the output, which by my reading would be an EULA breach as well.

by bri3d 9y ago

sverhagen 9y ago

I feel like "grandpa is gonna talk", and I'm not even that old. But "when I grew up", "reverse engineering" was still explained as an incredibly hard thing, infinitely harder than just engineering. It was said to be where one team would go into a room with a device, send out a spec, that a different team would then take to implement, they'd never meet, the implementing team would never get to see or touch the original device (pretty much what someone in a sibling thread described as their own experience, rather than me just hearing this being explained). With all that in mind, I'd say that WPL (the defendant) pretty much missed the whole point of reverse engineering...

rahimnathwani 9y ago
That's 'clean room' reverse engineering. Not all reverse engineering has to be like that.
- mjevans 9y ago
  Based on the descriptions in the article, aside from isolating the teams, this is very much what they did. The difference being that they didn't have a second team dis-assemble and actually reverse engineer the product to write a formal spec for how it functioned. Instead they did A/B testing to ensure that the output of the known product produced the same output as the reference implementation, reportedly without examining how the black box worked.
bri3d 9y ago
Yes - this was the point I was making in the last sentence of my comment. People writing things like emulators think about "reverse engineering" and take clean-room precautions. People writing things like spreadsheets think about "what does the competitor product do" and "competitive analysis" and type things into competing products and observe the output, which by my reading would be an EULA breach as well.