Re: reverse engineering bounties

On Tue, Oct 05, 2004 at 03:20:27PM +0200, Michael Roitzsch wrote:
> 
> > In this case, such a thing would not be a bad thing but a win-win situation 
> > for both sides IMO. 
> 
> I don't want to be counterproductive and I am in no way a lawyer, but there 
> might be a legal component in this discussion. I don't know the general 
> EU/US/WIPO opinions on this, but reverse engineering for the sake of 
> interoperability is (within some bounds) legal in the EU. However, 
> jurisdictions might require this process to be non-commercial. For example 
> the German copyright law has such a restriction. (You can circumvent copy 
> protection mechanisms here in Germany, if not done for money.)

People are free not to accept a bounty or have it passed on to an
organization of their choice.

The legal state of reverse engineering is dubious in some countries, but
thankfully it is very clear in some places that explicitly allow RE, namely
Australia and Switzerland.  In Switzerland CSS (no typo) is forbidden, BTW.

Does that appease you?

Diego



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