[sane-devel] A doubt about reverse engineering

[Julien BLACHE]

JKD <JKD@JKDSoft.cjb.net> wrote:

Hi,

> I'm writting a program to control hp scanjet 3970 (at this momment I can
> not call it 'backend') using reverse engineering to a windows library
> provided by HP. And I have a doubt. Due to the structure of the program
> is similar to functions debugged in the library... could I have any
> legal problems with HP? Could exist any problem in making GPL any code
> derived from aplying reverse engineering to a copyrighted library?

HP strongly supports Linux, and usually help as much as they can.

I don't think they'd go after you for writing a backend for the
3970. You could even try to ask them for the specs, although I don't
know what their policy is in this regard. (in such companies the right
hand tends to ignore what the left hand does, so...)

JB.

-- 
Julien BLACHE                                   <http://www.jblache.org> 
<jb@jblache.org>                                  GPG KeyID 0xF5D65169