Re: SDK header translations licensing?

Hello,

> That is not true. You are _not_ allowed to reengineer if
> documentation or an other interface is available.
> 
> Define "available". 

Well, what it is exactly is unfortunately unknown: The law says it 
has to be "easy available". Now what is easy? Is paying $$$ easy 
(and if so: $100 or $1B)? Is a NDA agreement easy? Is going to 
Richmond and asking Bill easy? Nonetheless, getting interface 
information by either a header file, documentation, OLE, DCOM or 
whatever doesn't allow real "binary reengineering". In other cases 
our law allows binary reengineering. 


> However that (binary checking) is not the kind of reverse
> engineering I mean. I meant more checking source of example 
> applications under a free license, or publically published code.

Well, with that you are on the safe side - at least as long as that 
stuff isn't obviously illegal. A wouldn't even touch a piece of 
source which includes comments that this or that information has 
been taken from the Win2000 sources which have shown up on the net - 
with or without free license :-)


> If you entered into an legal agreement to obtain the headers, e.g. 
> by means of EULA, it can. 

Depends on the legal agreement and on how a judge would interpret 
the legal status of the header file. A NDA, business secret stuff 
surely. An EULA for software which can be optained by anyone maybe 
not. If and only if the header is consider interface documentation 
the laws say it cannot be protected - in such a case a software 
publisher could write whatever he wants it could be void. After all, 
the sense of that law is to make interoperability possible and to 
avoid closed standards.
 

> I wouldn't like to be a guinea pig. We got one cease and desist
> from Borland (regarding TV code which was promptly removed), and I 
> like to keep it like that.

As well as I. We also had such a case - although in a much smaller 
scale. Someone with a large pocket around here? 


- Matthias



 
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