Free?

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 26.10.2011 23:52, schrieb Steven Schveighoffer:
> On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:51:11 -0400, Daniel Gibson
> <metalcaedes at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Am 26.10.2011 23:38, schrieb Steven Schveighoffer:
>>>
>>> But it's much harder to reverse engineer how someone built a machine
>>> than it is to reverse engineer how software is built.
>>
>> Really?
>> I guess it depends on the machine but I imagine it isn't so hard to
>> dismantle a machine to find out how it works? (But I have no
>> experience with that, it's just a guess)
>> Reverse Engineering software can be pretty hard if the author made it
>> deliberately hard, like Skype.
>
> If you have no idea how a material is built, such as a new kind of
> glass, you have to guess.

Ok, for materials it's probably hard, but there is a possibility of 
chemical analysis and stuff like that.
But I guess for things like e.g. car engines it may be easier (besides 
maybe special/new materials used).

> There are often few clues left behind of how
> to build a physical machine. This is not the same for software, which
> can always be disassembled.

Getting the relevant information out of the assembly may still not be 
trivial.
But to be honest, I don't have much experience with reverse engineering 
software either, I just read that it's quite often hard to reverse 
engineer some software like drivers.


Anyway, I'm strongly opposed to software patents.
My main concerns are that
1. Often trivial ideas are patented
2. Even for non-trivial stuff it isn't unlikely that some expert 
reinvents the same algorithm/whatever for the same problem.
One Example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_volume#Depth_fail
3. Because of this you can never be sure you're not violating patents 
when developing software without knowingly copying ideas of other people.
Checking this is impossible even for big companies with specialized 
lawyers, let alone smaller companies or hobby developers.


Cheers,
- Daniel