jal@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu (Jyh-An Lee) (12/12/90)
I read the news about using image file of Digitalk's Smalltalk/V for $500 per year. It is horrible. I took a couple of months to trace down the definition of bytecodes of Smalltalk/V. I intented to migrate the Smalltalk/V to HP-UX with X window. Hopefully, there are someone who know about law about this kind of situation I got.
taylord@Software.Mitel.COM (Don Taylor) (12/14/90)
In article <1990Dec12.054903.21130@ecst.csuchico.edu> jal@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu (Jyh-An Lee) writes: >I read the news about using image file of Digitalk's Smalltalk/V for $500 per >year. It is horrible. >I took a couple of months to trace down the definition of bytecodes of >Smalltalk/V. >I intented to migrate the Smalltalk/V to HP-UX with X window. >Hopefully, there are someone who know about law about this kind of >situation I got. I think that you are in trouble on two counts: Technically, there is a bit more too porting ST than implementing the bytecodes. But, _perhaps_ more importantly, I don't think that Digitalk are going to let you reverse engineer any code that they have not given you the source to. A couple of years ago, somebody reverse engineered the compiler back to ST and announced that they were going to post it to the net. The lawyers came out and squashed it. If I were you then I think that I would call Digitalk myself, tell them what I plan to do and why. Maybe they will cooperate, if not then at least you know what their position would be. I may be wrong, but I believe that Digitalk did let a group here at Carleton University (or was it Defense Research Establishment, Ottawa?) do a port for a special-pupose radar signal processing multi-processor system. This was reported in OOPSLA a couple of years ago. If you go ahead without their blessing, then in these sorts of situations, the de facto legal situation seems to be that he who can afford the most lawyers wins. How many lawyers can you afford? Good luck, Don. -- Don Taylor (613)-592-2122 x 3007 mitel!taylord@uunet.uu.net Mitel Corp. ...!uunet!mitel!taylord 350 Legget Drive, Kanata Ontario, Canada, K2K 1X3