EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: gnif on October 10, 2017, 01:00:27 am
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Hi All,
I have been working on another project that could become commercializable, part of it may require a little bit of reverse engineering of binaries to discover secrets needed to be compatible and make use of said binaries. Normally I would be happy to just hack at it and open source everything, but in this instance I am worried about the legal implications here, and how they could change things to prevent it from working.
The binaries have a public published SDK, but are restricted to work only on certain high grade professional hardware which the vendor is able to bypass for their own applications that run on consumer hardware (some might have guessed the company from this statement alone, knowing my history). From what I already know I do not need to perform any decryption of secret information, or modify their binaries in any way, nor do I need to distribute their binaries.
Are there any legal issues I need to be concerned about here?
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I am not a lawyer in any country, so take this for what it is worth.
In earlier days in similar cases it was established that complying with interface requirements was legitimate. But there was great concern that in learning the interface by reverse engineering the code unacceptable usage would occur.
The solution, which may or may not be accessible to you was to carefully split the software development into two teams. One did the reverse engineering and wrote the interface specification. The second worked only from the this document. Great care was taken not only to be sure that the interface document was the only communication between the two teams, but also to able to prove that there was no communication. Literal locked rooms with controlled communications and other such measures.
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Why is it necessary to rely on something that has to be reverse engineered? Are there really no alternatives?
I can imagine within a niche market there are likely to be few alternatives - and one could easily become the leading player, perhaps by a significant enough margin that they become the "industry standard". Hooking into that sort of established environment just makes immense commercial sense.
Not even a commercial arrangement with the vendor in question.
Following on from my above statement, the vendor in question would certainly know the value of their product - and would likely demand a significant sum to disclose any details. That's assuming they would even consider doing so. Some holders of commercially valuable information would rather sell their grandmother before parting with it.
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Why is it necessary to rely on something that has to be reverse engineered? Are there really no alternatives?
I can imagine within a niche market there are likely to be few alternatives - and one could easily become the leading player, perhaps by a significant enough margin that they become the "industry standard". Hooking into that sort of established environment just makes immense commercial sense.
Not even a commercial arrangement with the vendor in question.
Unfortunately there is no chance of this, what I intend to do will allow cheap hardware to perform tasks they reserve for their top tier products.
Following on from my above statement, the vendor in question would certainly know the value of their product - and would likely demand a significant sum to disclose any details. That's assuming they would even consider doing so. Some holders of commercially valuable information would rather sell their grandmother before parting with it.
This would certainly be the case here, there are two products that can do what I want to do, one is their own, the other is another huge company with untold wealth that can afford to buy the feature (which publicly they don't even admit is an option).
To be honest, the feature lockout is anti-competitive and blocks anyone else from producing software that works well with their products, and since they own the market share they effectively can kill competitors. I can already think of several that are dying off due to the fact that they just simply can't compete due to lockout.
It wouldn't bother me so much if they just said... this feature was only for top tier products and stuck with it.
Instead they have said: "This feature is only for top tier products.... but secretly a few products we like can use it also on the consumer grade stuff".
At this point I am seriously considering just releasing the information to the public
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Another consideration is any terms to which you may have agreed when obtaining the software you're reverse engineering. I'm not sure how enforceable EULAs are in Australia but it's probably worth at least reviewing any licensing agreements that are attached to the software. Even if the terms wind up being unenforceable, it may take a prohibitively expensive legal battle to establish that fact. Or at least that's something I'd be concerned about here in the US.
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It's also worth remembering that right and wrong starts to matter less when the pockets of one party are deeper than the other's. There is a point at which being right isn't enough to save you. Those with deep pockets can drain you empty, without you ever having had your day in court.
Unfortunately, civil law often is about the ability to defend your position and not about what's actually right and wrong. You can have patents and contracts and whatnot, but without the money to back those up in court, you might as well have the first 5 pages of the 1989 telephone directory.
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Reverse engineering for interoperability is explicitly permitted under EU law. So, all else aside, you'll be good in the EU.