[ale] [WAY OT]Reverse Engineering MS Visual Basic Applications

[James P. Kinney III]

Hack away. If they come after you, tell 'em to bow it out their a**
since you tried to get them to do something else. Wave the "OK to
reverse-engineer" paper and start naming the law firms you had look at
the documentation that all gave their approval (bluff). I'll be happy to
refer a good contract lawyer to you if they insist on calling the bluff.

Not to chide anyone, but if someone pays to have software written for
them, THEY OWN IT, not the writers. The company who writes it, unless
they are devious and the client doesn't read the the agreement and
PROTEST LOUDLY, should have no more claim to ownership of the code than
the shoemaker does to the shoes on my feet.

GPL. GPL. GPL. GPL. GPL. GPL. GPL. GPL. GPL .GPL. GPL. GPL. GPL. GPL.

This situation underscores the overwhelming need for source code access.
I have hit this wall more than once on projects where the original code
base writers are gone and the source was not provided and now the entire
project gets redone FROM SCRATCH to make up for the deficiency. If the
hood is welded shut, don't buy the car!

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 16:55, Jonathan Glass wrote:
> Apparently not.  When the company announced the break-up, the
> programmers became very disgruntled, and that is a much info as the
> company's management is willing to share.  :(
> 
> Jonathan Glass
> 
> On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 16:43, Geoffrey wrote:
> > They won't provide the source?
> > 
> > Jonathan Glass wrote:
> > > A friend of mine had some custom software written by a small consulting
> > > firm.  The firm has since fallen on hard times, split up, and told him
> > > he's out of luck.  They did (supposedly) provide him with a document
> > > spelling out his legal right to reverse engineer the software.  Anyone
> > > know how I should proceed here?  Is this legal, does anyone on this list
> > > know how to do or contract for this type of work?
> > > 
> > > TIA
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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