I accept your point of view. I don't agree with it, but I accept it. My perspective on certain matters is a little different. Thank you very much for sharing your insights.
Actually I was told (and this was by a lawyer actually) that reverse engineering is legal in the EU. An EULA if it says anything different would be illegal. I actually reviewed this with ChatGPT right now, and it seems the claim that Reverse Engineering is legal (as long as no trademarks are violated) in the EU is CORRECT. It needs to be "cleanroom" though.
And I understand and accept both your views though for myselves I chose different (I was actually quite happy to see the video of smarkusg port so it was shown it can be done on OS4 too ^^).
Sure, but that's their problem, not mine :) I brought this up to give an example of companies being trigger happy, not to make any hard statements about the legality of reverse engineering. I expect it to remain in the grey area for many years to come.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
@BSzili I think smarkusg just wanted to be cautious, not spread FUD. I understand it as all he wanted to say is that he tested that it works but does not want to be the one to make it available. Even if it's unlikely at the moment it's not impossible that the copyright holder once decides that they have something to make some money from and starts to go after people who distribute their stuff. This can even be somebody who did not write it but somehow aquired the copyright later and then claim they are entitled to get money from other's work. This isn't unheard of in Amiga land. So just experimenting with things for yourself is OK but distributing things with unclear copyright (or violating copyright e.g. by not publishing GPL sources) is not so it's better to just stay off that if you don't want to deal with the consequences. You are ready to take some (according to your assessment low) risk but smarkusg isn't. That's all I think. It's up to everyone how much risk they take and maybe demonstrating that it works insipres somebody who is more ready to take the risk and get this out so that's why smarkusg published it and did not keep it secret.
@balaton Let me be clear: I don't care if he releases his port or not. In my initial reply I didn't event address him directly to avoid putting pressure on him. I do however care about others who come into this thread and take the FUD at face value without considering Epic's attitude towards UE1 in the past decade or so. He is of course entitled to make a public spectacle out of this situation, and I can present a counter argument and point out the hypocrisy regarding UE1 and wipeout-rewrite.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
@BSzili There may be a misunderstanding on both sides. You may misinterpret an overly cautious stance to copyrights for spreading FUD and the other side may misinterpret your replies as accusing them with hypocrisy for what they said or did. When in reality it's only different views on what is allowed by copyrights and what is the reality in this particular case. I think smarkusg's intention was not to spread FUD and your intention was not to attack him but due to mutual misunderstanding this turned more bitter than it should have been. I think as long as you don't distribute your changes you are free to do whatever you want with whatever sources or binaries you have, especially as long as nobody else knows about it. Talking about it publicly may be admiting breaking some EULA but since not everything in an EULA may be enforcable (e.g. no reverse engineering clauses) and not much harm was done to the owners it's probably not much to hold you liable for. Problems may begin if you distribute something based on code you don't have a license for as then the owners can claim some harm and may take some action. It's up to people to decide which line they want to cross and in what cases. Using copyrighted sources for testing at home without making any profit or distributing it is not the same as distributing stuff with unclear copyright and not the same level of breaking an EULA or copyright so I don't think it's hypocrisy to only go up to that line.
We can come up with all kinds of "what if" scenarios, this is an Amiga forum after all, but we can also look at a company's response or lack of response to past events to gauge how they are more likely to react to something. There is always a degree of risk unless the codebase is open source. If you are dealing with a litigious company that'll find a way to go after you. What is up for debate is the the amount of risk involved. Where I took and still take an issue is blowing things out of proportion and signaling some grave danger to others, and I'll keep hammering this as long as it's brought up.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Unfortunately, everyone's perspective is influenced by the events of the Amiga soap opera. Fortunately, outside of the Amiga world, things are experienced differently, and the fact that no one has filed a complaint about copyrighted code shows that we normally look to the future and care little or nothing about the past. ..rest assured, no one cares about our beloved platform.
..rest assured, no one cares about our beloved platform.
I think you've drawn overly pessimistic conclusions from this discussion. When people are interested in a platform, they will naturally have different opinions on certain topics. Even if it resembles a soap opera.
A certain kind of creatures love to take on the role of lawyer or whatever and keep the flame burning for as long as possible just to waste time and energy better spent on something else.
They love to take a topic like this and nitpic it into atoms over and over a billion times untill everyone have nightmares as soon as they hear the name of the game.
Be careful not to feed them fuel because they don't care about arguments going anywhere, just that they keep on going so they can feel powerful like "I made them do what I wanted for nothing".
Have seen that happen a billion times. Also when someone with power steps in like say Trevor and crush their arguments they just get quiet and start over with something else at a later point.
I'm locking this thread because it has turned into an interpretation of what "cautiousness" vs. "spreading FUD" is. Both sides have had their say, and the discussion is no longer productive.