Slashdot Mirror
Interview with Alexander Noe, PxScan Developer
wikinerd writes "I interviewed Alexander Noe, developer of the open source PxScan and PxView utilities. He recently received a cease-and-desist letter by Shinano Kenshi, the Japanese company which controls Plextor. His utilities provide similar functionality with PlexTools, sending special command sequences to Plextor DVD recorders that activate special features such as media quality check."
Specially since you buy the DRIVE not the software. The software is the COST of doing business. The problem is you have ignorant marketting and investors who think "everything has commercial value".
.doc file and give it out.
Look at Broadcom. They hold their hardware specs a closely guarded secret [for the most part] and the net affect is you can only use their wifi stuff [reliably] in windows... The problem is without the drivers the hardware has zero customer value. But giving out free drivers lets you SELL hardware since it now has value.
The sad thing it isn't even that you have to write the damn drivers. In the OSS world of BSD/Linux the kernel contributors would GLADLY write a driver for free if it meant they could use some quality hardware with the respective OS. So all it costs the hardware manufacturer is describing the interface [at the high level] of how to talk to the hardware. Since these documents are ROUTINELY produced internally so the software teams can write their windows drivers all it means is you re-brand the
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Even if they explicitly tell him not to do so, he can still make public the information in the letter.
They have copyright on the letter. What he needs to do is paraphrase the letter, with attribution, and quote only the most unbelievably stupid parts.
As for the original program, they need to tell him which specificy rights of theirs he is violating. The is no such thing as generic "intellectual property". There are only copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark, and contractual rights.
Unless they have a patent on the method his program uses to perform the activity his program performs, or he's violating an NDA or using their trademark, they can't stop him from performing the activity.
Bottom line: they can't stop him from publishing his code, only theirs. Using the same methods they use doesn't violate their copyright.
sigs, as if you care.