Is it legal and ethical to reverse engineer software to port it to another system?

Posted by Igor Zinov'yev on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Igor Zinov'yev
Published on 2012-11-14T07:47:59Z Indexed on 2012/11/14 11:18 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 387

Filed under:

legal

|

ethics

|

porting

I love gaming, I love games that allow modding and I love linux. But the fact that most games right now are targeted for windows (consoles aside), most mods and modding tools are also targeted for windows. There is a certain modder called Boris Vorontsov that makes a famous visual overhaul mod series called ENB.

What he does (or I think he does) is he enhances or changes the behavior of classes defined in the d3d9.dll library. Needless to say it almost never works under wine.

Recently I have asked him if he would ever release his version of the library under some open license, and he said "no". Now that I think of it, even if he did release his code, he would have surely faced some legal problems.

Now there is my question. Is it legal and ethical to reverse engineer his version of the library to adapt the wine's open source version of d3d9.dll to be able to run his mods?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about legal

SCALE 8x: Free software legal issues

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>LWN.net:</b> "But in reality the FLOSS ecosystem relies on a complex legal framework in order to run smoothly and to stand up to proprietary software competition: the various software licenses, contribution agreements, copyright and other "intellectual property" law." >>> More
Copyright infringement - inside the legal minefield

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>New Zealand Herald:</b> "Several weeks ago the Australian high court ruled in favour of Aussie ISP iiNet in a landmark legal battle where AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) argued that iiNet was as guilty as some of its subscribers of online copyright infringement… >>> More
Signing redistributed files

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
In order to submit a desktop application for the Windows 8 app store, you need to digitally sign any driver or .exe associated with the application. However, the application I was trying to submit contains several files that are redistributions of other companies' software, and some of these are not… >>> More
Is it illegal to rewrite every line of an open source project in a slightly different way, and use it in a closed source project?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
There is some code which is GPL or LGPL that I am considering using for an iPhone project. If I took that code (JavaScript) and rewrote it in a different language for use on the iPhone would that be a legal issue? In theory the process that has happened is that I have gone through each line of the… >>> More
Is it really free to deploy SharpDevelop apps?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm trying SharpDevelop to develop c# applications. Regardless of the language and the IDE, is it free to deploy applications that use WinForms? I've been developing with MonoDevelop just because it has a designer for Gtk# (client doesn't want to pay more for licences as to use VS...), but it's too… >>> More

Related posts about ethics

The ethics of aggregating other peoples' content

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
Content theft Most of the recent - what I'll call - "discussions" about content aggregators have revolved around content theft. I'm not going to flip-flop on that topic: when you use someone else's work, you ask first, and if given the okay, you cite it. You can't take my blog article and post it… >>> More
Code of ethics for programmers ?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
what all are code of ethics for programmers ? >>> More
The programmer's code of ethics [closed]

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
what you think about the programmer's code of ethics ? >>> More
Ethics and Law of modified LGPL code deployment in a commercial software

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
First bit of the question: What are the legal requirements of LGPL code during the deployment of a commercial product? Software package should include LGPL licence file Anything else? Shall we add a line to our "software agreement text" where you need to click next in the installer ? Second bit… >>> More
Signing redistributed files

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
In order to submit a desktop application for the Windows 8 app store, you need to digitally sign any driver or .exe associated with the application. However, the application I was trying to submit contains several files that are redistributions of other companies' software, and some of these are not… >>> More