On Mar 23, 2006, at 3:47 AM, Audrius Meskauskas wrote: > Maybe one person can look into that code, write the brief draft of > the documentation and then another can implement it using that > documentation only? This would be the possibility to work with > formats for that there is no other specification available apart > from the released piece of the implementing code. > That is, in fact, what the documentation comments for that class do, which are rendered here: <http://metastatic.org/source/JKS.html>. This is a simple, English description of the format, and I don't think (but, not-a-lawyer, yadda yadda) if someone were to use this to construct their own implementation, even if this description was obtained through reverse engineering. I mean, as far as the *idea* of that format goes: - No-one can claim it's a trade secret, because Sun licenses the source to third parties. - No-one can make a copyright claim, because it's a simple English description of an algorithm, not Sun's code itself. - This format is unlikely to be patented. So, if I reverse-engineer this format, then write a simple document describing the format and give that description to someone else, the question is how "tainted" that person is. I don't think here in the US this taints the other person much at all. Do any other jurisdictions (of which the present company is a resident) have lenient enough laws such that using this description to write a new implementation doesn't taint them?
