Re: [Moderator] Re: MacBook Air multitouch trackpad API

FROM : Steve Christensen
DATE : Sun Feb 03 21:21:48 2008

On Feb 2, 2008, at 7:22 PM, Nicko van Someren wrote:
> On 2 Feb 2008, at 21:31, Scott Anguish wrote:

>> On Feb 2, 2008, at 1:17 PM, Wesley Smith wrote:

>>> On Feb 2, 2008 1:15 PM, Scott Anguish <<email_removed>> wrote:

>>>>
>>>> Do not post links to reverse engineered APIs here.

>>>
>>> why not?

>>
>>
>> First, the Mac OS X Software License Agreement says you may not 
>> disassembly or reverse-engineer (This is list not the place to 
>> debate whether or not this would fall under fair use or not)

>
>
> Humph...  OS X sends me an event on a post card (OK, in an 
> NSEvent), one it sends to everyone else who has a MacBook Air, and 
> I'm not allowed to tell people what it says? I agree that this 
> isn't the place to debate what is and isn't reverse engineering, 
> but the simple fact is that this isn't.



From Wikipedia: "Reverse engineering is the process of discovering 
the technological principles of a device, object or system through 
analysis of its structure, function and operation." In order to 
determine that support for the MacBook Air trackpad exists, the OP 
had to dig through undocumented private frameworks (or private class 
methods in public frameworks) to find what he was looking for.

I'm not qualified to discuss fair use in this case, but it does sound 
like reverse engineering.

Another point about discussing private APIs is that some people then 
have a tendency to want to use them, rather than waiting for a public 
solution or relying on another way of doing something. And some of -
them- don't code defensively so that when Apple removes that API, or 
changes how it behaves, their software becomes unstable.

My two cents...

steve