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    SubjectRe: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]
    On 27 Apr 2003, Alan Cox wrote:

    [ playing John Humphries today ]

    > > But you are still missing the point. As long as the feeling is that
    > > it is OK to reverse engineer by staring at the file formats, the
    > > corporations will respond by encrypting the data you want to stare at.
    >
    > And government if it is smart will reply by enforcing reverse
    > engineering rights *for compatibility* (not cloning), or business (the
    > surviving bits anyway) will figure it out and do it themselves.

    Alan -- could you please explain what you see as the real
    differences between reverse engineering for "compatibility"
    and for "cloning"?

    It isn't obvious to me that there is a line-in-the-sand.
    For example, a Word document extractor like "wv" is not
    nearly as useful without an attached word processor (be it
    or not that your intention is to save in that format).

    > > In other words, it's pretty much hopeless to try and catch up that way,
    > > you might as well go try and build something better from the start.
    >
    > You have to interoperate to do that.

    Is that really true? It may make sense for a lot of
    consumer applications, but does it really apply to source
    control?

    Isn't it the case that sometimes features are more compelling
    than compatibility?

    Matthew.

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