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Re: [Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>] Re: Debian & BSD concerns



Reverse engineering is not ilegal as far as I know, but 'look-and-feel'
lawsuits have been won by Lotus and others (excepting, amazingly, Mac vs.
MS).  These look-and-feel suits get people very excited since they are a
good way for large companies to intimidate and bully smaller ones wihtout
the resources for a legal battle, and have atracted attention from the
League for Programming Freedom (name possibly butchered).  However, I know
of no legal precedent for these laws affecting free software.

> actually i think certain forms of reverse engineering are illegal due
> to patent and/or copyright issues but it can be worked around by
> having one person run a lot of tests on a piece of equipment and
> another creating <whatever> to fit the specs as determined by the
> tester.
> 
> i'm not certain about this, so please don't make the list suffer if
> i'm wrong.
> 
> --p.
> 
> 
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