On Mar 23, 2006, at 11:11 AM, Casey Marshall wrote:
On Mar 23, 2006, at 3:47 AM, Audrius Meskauskas wrote:
Maybe one person can look into that code, write the brief draft of
the documentation and then another can implement it using that
documentation only? This would be the possibility to work with
formats for that there is no other specification available apart
from the released piece of the implementing code.
That is, in fact, what the documentation comments for that class
do, which are rendered here: <http://metastatic.org/source/
JKS.html>. This is a simple, English description of the format, and
I don't think (but, not-a-lawyer, yadda yadda) if someone were to
use this to construct their own implementation,
"they would not be tainted,"
:-P
even if this description was obtained through reverse engineering.
I mean, as far as the *idea* of that format goes:
- No-one can claim it's a trade secret, because Sun licenses the
source to third parties.
- No-one can make a copyright claim, because it's a simple
English description of an algorithm, not Sun's code itself.
- This format is unlikely to be patented.
So, if I reverse-engineer this format, then write a simple document
describing the format and give that description to someone else,
the question is how "tainted" that person is. I don't think here in
the US this taints the other person much at all. Do any other
jurisdictions (of which the present company is a resident) have
lenient enough laws such that using this description to write a new
implementation doesn't taint them?
