Kill MS, again, but sideways

Mike Rosing eresrch at eskimo.com
Wed Apr 16 06:24:34 PDT 2003


On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

> Then I have the right to appropriately dislike you, and to
> reverse-engineer the "product", which is so shoddy that you are ashamed of
> documenting its internals, and to publish it.
>
> I am currently HEAVILY pissed, as we built our servers on ASUS

[rant snipped]

> Vendors, who keep crucial informations away from the customers, should be
> shot. The ones, who try to sue the reverse engineers, should be boiled in
> oil before being shot.

I guess I have to agree :-)  Back in the early '80's I reverse engineered
a Harris PBX.  Replacing its 8080 microprocessor with a 68020 allowed me
to take over total control of the switch and make the long distance
company I worked in far more competitive.  It took a lot of effort and
equipment, and Harris Corp. never even believed we did it.  Good thing,
or they would have probably sued us!

Reverse engineering in that case makes 1 company far more competitive.
But in most cases simply understanding the principles is all you need
to build a better product.  The problem is then manufacturing, marketing
and selling the better product.  Most people are lazy, they just steal
the idea and duplicate the principles, maybe with cheaper parts.  That's
where I think the lawyers have a good job.  But if someone can figure
out a better way to do things, then the person who hired the lawyers to
harrass them needs to be boiled in oil.  Anything that slows the advance
of technology is a bad thing, and there's too many laws now aimed at
exactly that.

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike





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