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Originally Posted by SecretMethod70
Most software licenses explicitly prohibit reverse engineering. Furthermore, hardware reverse engineering is illegal in most countries.
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Software licenses don't really mean anything. "Shrinkwrap" licenses are unenforceable because you can't read the license before you have to agree to it. And you don't actually have to agree to a click-thru license in order to use the program. You bought a copy of the program, therefore you have the right to use it under normal copyright law. As for hardware RE, I don't know about other countries, but we were talking about the US and in the US its perfectly legal. Ever heard of the CueCat?
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Originally Posted by SecretMethod70
If all software were to be, in some degree, open-source, it would not be difficult to monitor. In fact, it would, again, be easy enough to monitor it yourself, or with the help of a private organization - say, the EFF for example.
All open source means is that one has access to the source code, so it's a simple question. Can you get the source and compile the program yourself? Yes or no. If the answer is no, the software maker is in violation. If the answer is yes, they are not. This is not really a difficult thing to monitor at all and would not require any significant amount of resources.
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I don't think you realize the huge amount of software that is published on the internet by individuals. It would be insanity to try to track it. Besides, what is this private organization going to do with the information anyway? Last time I checked, private organizations didn't have law enforcement powers.
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Originally Posted by SecretMethod70
No, not everyone would be able to make SENSE of the source code, but that's to be expected. The fact one could take apart the cotton gin to try and figure out how it worked didn't mean that everyone who did so would have enough knowledge to figure it out. But that that did could do so and improve upon it.
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If you are going to use that argument, you could go back further a step and say that not everyone can understand the machine code, but some people can.
Besides, all this is off the point. The original discussion was whether or not removing governmental regulation could prevent an abusive monoply situation such as the one Microsoft currently is in. You're now attempting to *add* regulation and it still wouldn't fix the problem. All it would do is necessitate even more of a police state because piracy would be even easier to do. Forcing open source would make any attempts at copy protection and registration futile.