could somebody please explain why reverse engineering wrong

[John Conway]

any discussion of this subject is going nowhere while ppl continously refer to certain engines as clones, or reverse engineered rybka, when we have no proof, yet, that this is the case. it is speculation presented as fact, until we have proof ppl should stop referring to certain engines as rybka clones and stop constructing their arguments solely on that (unproven) premise. in fact the original question had nothing to do with rybka at all, it was a simple ethical question as to why reverse engineering is so wrong. so far i have heard a lot about money (never asked) and a lot about rybka (never mentioned).

I agree with you, but why do you write this in reply to MY post. I never said another engine was a Rybka clone! I was only discussing the case of a hypothetical engine developed by reversing, and Albert mentioned Rybka, so I replied by using the case that the hypothetical engine was developed by reversing Rybka.

[bob]

i have been thinking about ths lately, and i am not even sure why reverse engineering an engine (in this case) is so wrong. when something comes along that is such an improvement on its predecessors it seems only natural to me that people would want to figure out how it is working, and to look to make improvements on said engine. is this not the basis of all technological advancements?

i have been thinking about this lately, and i am not even sure why stealing money (in this case) is so wrong. when someone comes along who is so much richer than other people it seems only natural to me that people would want take all his money, and to look to make more out of it. is this not the basis of all respectable entrepreneurship?

vp

I think the answer is much simpler. Reverse-engineering is _not_ wrong, and can't be prevented anywhere in the world that I know of. What _is_ wrong is to use reverse-engineering to discover how a process works, and then create a product that uses that process, but only if the "process" itself is patented. Reverse-engineering is not a copyright infringement, since the original code is not even available. But infringing on a patent is a different issue. Not that this applies to the current discussion, of course.

One can reverse-engineer without disassembling also. You just input enough data, look at the results, and eventually you can figure out what is going on inside. As in the case of reverse-engineering a microprocessor.

[jwes]

i have been thinking about ths lately, and i am not even sure why reverse engineering an engine (in this case) is so wrong. when something comes along that is such an improvement on its predecessors it seems only natural to me that people would want to figure out how it is working, and to look to make improvements on said engine. is this not the basis of all technological advancements?

i have been thinking about this lately, and i am not even sure why stealing money (in this case) is so wrong. when someone comes along who is so much richer than other people it seems only natural to me that people would want take all his money, and to look to make more out of it. is this not the basis of all respectable entrepreneurship?

vp

I think the answer is much simpler. Reverse-engineering is _not_ wrong, and can't be prevented anywhere in the world that I know of. What _is_ wrong is to use reverse-engineering to discover how a process works, and then create a product that uses that process, but only if the "process" itself is patented. Reverse-engineering is not a copyright infringement, since the original code is not even available.

IANAL, but my understanding of the arguments for software copyrights is that compilation, disassembly or decompilation are forms of translation as e.g. a translation of an English work into Japanese is a copyright violation even though no single character of the two works are the same.

[bob]

i have been thinking about ths lately, and i am not even sure why reverse engineering an engine (in this case) is so wrong. when something comes along that is such an improvement on its predecessors it seems only natural to me that people would want to figure out how it is working, and to look to make improvements on said engine. is this not the basis of all technological advancements?

i have been thinking about this lately, and i am not even sure why stealing money (in this case) is so wrong. when someone comes along who is so much richer than other people it seems only natural to me that people would want take all his money, and to look to make more out of it. is this not the basis of all respectable entrepreneurship?

vp

I think the answer is much simpler. Reverse-engineering is _not_ wrong, and can't be prevented anywhere in the world that I know of. What _is_ wrong is to use reverse-engineering to discover how a process works, and then create a product that uses that process, but only if the "process" itself is patented. Reverse-engineering is not a copyright infringement, since the original code is not even available.

IANAL, but my understanding of the arguments for software copyrights is that compilation, disassembly or decompilation are forms of translation as e.g. a translation of an English work into Japanese is a copyright violation even though no single character of the two works are the same.

We have had that discussion here many times with copyright/patent attorneys. The general consensus is that what you say has some truth to it, but proving it is close enough to impossible to make it not worthwhile to try. By the time someone reverse-engineers something, and then changes it, the trail is very cold. Somewhat unlike the idea of reverse-engineering a specific piece of hardware or electronics and then producing an exact duplicate. It would be very difficult to patent a chess engine, which is what you would need to protect against this, because chess is finite and the Patent office / congress has already made it impossible to patent any sort of algorithm that produces results that can be produced in other ways, since there would be no way to enforce such a patent. I can't patent an algorithm that counts from 1 to 1,000,000, as an example, because then no one else could use that idea without paying me a royalty. And it is not a particularly unique idea. In chess engines, we all generate moves, search a tree, evaluate various concepts from passed pawns to king-side attacks, so identifying a unique "algorithm" would be nearly impossible, making the patent application useless.

Messy stuff...

I never understood the idea of patenting software anyway, but it has been done. Even the algorithm to tranpose music from one key to another was patented years ago, yet it is absolutely trivial to do, and seems to violate the original intent since you can not patent a "sine" function and such.

But it has not been challenged, either, which may be why it has not been invalidated.