Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 28 Apr 2003 00:08:25 +0100 (BST) | From | Matthew Kirkwood <> | Subject | Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!] |
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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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