why reverse engineer?

On Tue, 8 Oct 1996, Greg Yukl wrote:
>
> Why would anyone bother to reverse engineer something except for
> commercial purposes? It's a lot of work -- possibly as much work
> or more as it was to create the original product. And, reverse
> engineering is a skill that takes considerable time and effort to
> learn. The time and effort spent is just not worth it unless you
> expect to make money from doing it.

Lolly Gassaway responded:
>
> Well, university researchers might have such an interest for
> scientific purposes. Students might for general intellectual
> curiosity.

I have known of workers at computer centers who when faced with a now buggy and old piece of third party systems software, for which source code was missing and the vendor has dissolved, went into the binary and patched it so that the business of the University can continue -- fair use under copyright law (maybe), but a no-no under proposed statutes?

David Dailey (ddailey[_at_]williams.edu) Received on Thu Oct 10 1996 - 15:27:04 GMT