Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 20 Jul 2003 01:45:19 +0200 | From | Adrian Bunk <> | Subject | Re: Bitkeeper |
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On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 03:39:56PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 12:28:38AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: > > > product for *money*. If you paid us money, you'd have a point. But > > > you didn't. You get to use the product for free and until there is > > > some case law which says otherwise, we get to make any rules we like. > > > And our rules say you can't reverse engineer. Too bad for you if you > > > don't like it, I'm not exactly overflowing with sympathy for someone > > > who paid nothing and is now complaining that they aren't allowed to > > > reverse engineer and steal what they didn't pay for. > > > > The current German copyright law doesn't talk about money. If you allow > > someone to use a copy the law explicitely states that some kind of > > contract clauses (e.g. a complete prohibition of disassembling) are > > simply void. > > Alan pointed out to me that the EU rules are for interoperability and they > do not allow reverse engineering for the purposes of learning how a product > works. > > Since BK can export any and *all* data and metadata from a one line command, > it's awfully hard to make the argument that you are reverse engineering > for interoperability. You can get your data as flat files, diffs, unified > diffs, context diffs. You can get your checkin comments in any format you > want. It's trivial to get data in and out of BK. > > You can even get all of that from a web server so you don't have to sully > your hands with evil BK software. > > So where is the law that says it is OK to reverse engineer when the product > already provides everything you could possibly want for interoperability?
Current German copyright law says things like that clauses that forbit to gather information about the ideas behind a program through normal program usage are void.
IANAL, and we are entering an area where you need a lawyer that reads both your licensing terms and the copyright law to tell exactly what is allowed and what isn't allowed.
My main point is: There are countries that have laws that are different from US laws (yes, there's a world outside the USA...). If I download software from your server it is possible that my local law is the one that is valid for the contract between us (independent of whether I pay for the software or whether you give it for free) and my local laws might be different from the jurisdiction in the USA.
> Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
cu Adrian
--
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