Re: Microsoft's OS competitors

Brad Slutsky <bslutsky[_at_]atlanta.com> writes:
>
> Reverse engineering is not legal if you agree in a contract that, in
> exchange for access to the materials, you will not reverse engineer them.
> No comment on the enforceability of that contract, which is an entirely
> different debate. Remember, though, that a jury returned a $13 million
> or so verdict against Stac on this issue. That probably has some
> deterrent effect.

So do it in Europe where there is now explicit protection for reverse engineering to discover interfaces regardless of the licence (where much of the Linux work is being done).

I think the real reason has been discussed earlier and that is that even if one could be reasonably sure of eventual success in the courts, MS would tie you up in litigation for long enough to make your product obsolete. Since success is not guaranteed it is simply too big a punt.

The Linux consortium has the best opportunity at success for many reasons:

• No one individual or company is bearing the financial burden of speculating on the outcome of any litigation.
• It will be hard to find individuals to sue because they are spread throughout the world.
• Suing individuals probably won't kill the project anyway because there is no one promoter to destroy financially (although it may affect people's willingness to rely on the Linux software rather than MS's) and a huge network of people just champing at the bit to annoy MS.
• The clone will probably be free so clone-authors receive no direct commercial benefit.
• MS is unlikely to recover any significant damages if they sue anyway since few participants in the Linux project have deep pockets and aren't likely to get them through this project.
• Much of the work is being done in Europe where there are explicit protections for reverse-engineering to discover interfaces.
• The Linux project is just fundamentally appealing to the American spirit of independent free thought, free market and free speech. A typical US judge short of political and commercial pressure is going to bend over backwards to help these guys keep doing what they are doing.

Tim Arnold-Moore, LL.B. (Melb)        | Multimedia Database Systems, RMIT  |
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