30 Dec
2006
30 Dec
'06
3:42 p.m.
Sometime Today, Amish Mehta assembled some asciibets to say:
Samba is what? Reverse engineering. Isnt it? Microsoft cant to anything about it.
You're confusing software and protocols. A software's licence can prohibit reverse engineering the software itself. A protocol cannot be protected by a licence.
If a company wants to protect their protocol, they need to document it completely, and patent it, and then put restrictions on use of the intellectual property within the patent. No one does that because no one wants to document and publicise their protocols.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I'll let our list's lawyers comment on this from a legal point of view.