[CREATE] on reverse engineering, patents and stuff

[Dave Neary]

Hi Alexandre,

Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> IMO,
> giving proprietary guys even a tiny chance to sue one of our
> developers should never occur.

Unfortunately, with the US legal system, it's almost certainly the case
that the proprietary guys can sue us whenever they want. Likely enough
it will be patent violation, but perhaps trademark and copyright issues
will also surface (particularly DMCA).

IMHO, avoiding patent-encumbered functionality which is important for
advancing the program is a mistake, and is giving in to the flawed legal
system. I don't think that we should court lawsuits, but we should also
not ham-string ourselves by actively avoiding them. Let the chips fall
where they may, one day soon there will be a landmark lawsuit, thousands
of patents (and patent applications) will be thrown out, forcing a
severe reform of the US and EU patent systems.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
dneary at free.fr