Is reverse engineering evil?

Posted by Amir Arad on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Amir Arad
Published on 2008-11-09T13:08:59Z Indexed on 2010/05/28 11:21 UTC
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Filed under:

subjective

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legal

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reverse-engineering

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ethics

Lately I've been pondering on how a specific beloved old game actually works. I had some mild progress, but then a friend pointed out that if I really loved the game and appreciate it, I wouldn't try to reverse-engineer it.

Note that the game is long considered an abandonware and is offerd for download publicly in lawful game sites, and I have no commercial / other large scale intentions - just to learn and "mess around" with it.

Did I miss something? Is there an ethical taboo regarding reverse-engeneering? Alternatively, is there a legal issue?

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