Re: Quake license forbids Quake specs?

Marja K Ivars (mivars@cc.helsinki.fi)
Tue, 25 Jun 1996 00:03:25 +0300 (EET DST)

Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 00:03:25 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Marja K Ivars <mivars@cc.helsinki.fi>
To: quake-dev@gamers.org
Subject: Re: Quake license forbids Quake specs?
In-Reply-To: <199606241614.SAA05369@marvin.nero.uni-bonn.de>

On Mon, 24 Jun 1996, Bernd Kreimeier wrote:

> > From: Olivier Montanuy <montanuy@lsun80.lannion.cnet.fr>
> > I read the Quake shareware license. Seems we cannot release
> > specs for that one: all reverse engeneering is prohibited,
> > and specs *are* reverese engeneering. Is it voluntary from
> > id, or just an artefact?
>
> Publishing specs is not illegal. Obtaining the content of such
> specs by illegal means is prohibited. id cannot give permission
> to create specs by hacking - they can look the other way.
> This is surely an unfortunate situation, but a familiar one.

Hmm. What exactly is reverse engineering? If I do "strings quake.exe" to
get some fancy potential console keywords which id will probably never
bother to document, have I "modified, disassembled, reverse engineered or
decompiled the Software"?

Just curious.

Lauri