[hobbit] Will hobbit infringe patent/copyright of Quest's bb ?

[Henrik Stoerner]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 07:50:16AM -0600, T.J. Yang wrote:
> 
> port 1984 bb message protocol, log format are all originated and designed 
> by Quest' BB program.
> Will hobbit client/server  in legal problem later on if Quest decide to 
> enforce per-seat license policy ?

I don't think there will be a problem. I am not a lawyer, but here's how
I see it:

If Quest were to claim any ownership of the BB procotol or file formats, it 
would have to be based on either a) trade secret, b) patent, or c) copyright.

a) fails because the BB folks published the protocol for anyone to use;
   it is documented in the BB on-line help, which is freely accessible
   for download.

b) fails since AFAIK the communications protocol has not been patented.

c) fails both because Hobbit doesn't use any code from BB, and because
   copyright does not restrict interoperability and reverse-engineering
   work. E.g. that is how the Samba team have been able to implement
   a MS Windows fileserver on Linux without getting into legal problems 
   with Microsoft.

Besides, Hobbit actually uses a very extended version of the BB
protocol. I currently regard the BB protocol as a "legacy" compatibility
thing only; all of the communication between Hobbit modules already use
a different protocol (eg the client->server communication), or will do
so within a very short time (the only thing left using standard BB
protocol is how the network test results are sent to the Hobbit server,
and that will change over the next year).


On a broader scale: I've had this question asked privately a couple of
times since Hobbit was first released. I know that Quest is aware of
the Hobbit project; I also know that until now they haven't in any way
contacted me regarding any kind of "intellectual property" issue. Hobbit
has been around for 2 years, so if they had any problems with this I 
think I would have heard from them by now.


Regards,
Henrik