Author: Andrew Dados
Date: 23:25:25 08/24/99
Go up one level in this thread
On August 25, 1999 at 01:50:26, Micheal Cummings wrote: >On August 25, 1999 at 01:43:16, Keith Kitson wrote: > >>I reckon perhaps the word hacking is an unfortunate use of the word here. >> >>It sounds more dynamic than just 'creating an interface' between two programs, >>which is probably what is really being requested in this instance. >> >>Keith > >either way doing without the programmers permission, or altering any program for >that matter without the programmers permission is illegal. While there are some semantical problems involved with term 'hacking' let's discuss that all from scratch. For any programmer it's obvious that altering King binary to work as fritz engine is *not possible*. So what can be done here is: 1) figuring proprietaty communication protocol between King engine and CM interface 2) writing *totally separate* program to translate that protocol between King engine and other then CM interface. So noone is talking about altering original programs. The only legal question here is: If someones undocumented communication protocol can be duplicated/used. I am not sure about it, but it's not trivial. If protocol was documented and copyrighted then it's not legal. Anyway - whole thing reminds me of someone posting info about ChessBase file formats. Noone complained there. But both things are related and not necessary covered by law yet. (I didn't hear of any lawsuit regarding, say, Word reading other document formats. I know some formats are copyrighted and/or covered by patents - gif for one). Is it legal that ChessBase programs can read Chess Genius game files? Seems so... -Andrew-
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.