Chance for Presto engine to be realeased!?!

[bphlpt]

Sure , ask anyone with an even minimal familiarity with Copyright, software and intellectual property related Laws about the validity of this (anonymous/apodictic - with all due respect to vinifera ) sentence:

its EULA makes it illegal, but its out of ANY support makes it legal

in an actual Court (in any of the countries that do have such Laws).

 

In other words Flasche, also with respect to vinifera, AFAIK, the part above in bold is unfortunately just not true. I believe that unless the software has been specifically released to the public the EULA will still apply. Whether it would be enforced might be another matter, but that would make no difference here. MSFN is a stickler about such things, so if you, or others, choose to pursue this approach you would be on your own and it could not be posted or discussed here. At least that is my understanding, which I'm sure will be corrected by a mod if I am wrong.

Cheers and Regards

[jaclaz]

@bphlt

Actually, there are several reasons why an EULA itself may be partially  or totally illegal (or void) in itself, but if an Author (for whatever reasons) decides to NOT release the Sources of his/her code as "Open Source" or as "Public Domain", the sources remain UNavailable, so the matter is not about an EULA, but rather on the legality of decompiling/disassembling binaries (and using such derivative work which is illegal because of "generic" Laws, not necessarily because of the EULA).

 

The known issues (which maybe were even a bit overhyped) about ReactOS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS

and clean-room (or Chinese wall) reverse engineering: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_reverse_engineering#Reverse_engineering

should have teached us something on the matter.

 

jaclaz

[bphlpt]

vinifera might have been referring to Abandonware, ie software that is "ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no product support is available".  But even so, as the referenced article states, copyright still officially applies, even if it is not tracked. - "Although such software is usually still under copyright, the owner may not be tracking or enforcing copyright violations."

 

Cheers and Regards

[Flasche]

Interesting I was just wondering about what he meant about when he said that in the xp 2019 forums, so its a no go way that way..., all well time to wait for presto open source.

[bphlpt]

Interesting I was just wondering about what he meant about when he said that in the xp 2019 forums, so its a no go way that way...

 

Yes, I'm afraid he was mistaken there as well.

 

Cheers and Regards