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Reverse engineering vs. copying | 238 comments | Create New Account

Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.

Reverse engineering vs. copying

Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 08:37 AM EDT

Where you say "If you take the published header files or documentation it
would be copyright infringement. However if you take example programmes that are
meant to work and ..."

What if instead you have someone write a series of programs that aimlessly call
every method in an API and also assert() the name of the superclasses and
interfaces. These programs would fully document all the API calls and hierarchy.
The first programmer publishes their collection of programs under BSD.

A second programmer takes just these BSD programs and writes a tool to extract
the original API as a document.

This way the second programmer reconstructs the API without licensing it or
copying the original headers.

This is what I just don't understand - how can you have a published API that 3rd
party developers are meant to call in their own code - and at the same time
claim the API list and structure is under copyright? You shirley have to copy
parts of an API just to use it!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Reverse engineering vs. copying - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 11:40 AM EDT

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