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

FROM : Scott Anguish
DATE : Sun Feb 03 21:48:43 2008

Guys.

Please, don't debate this here.

Just drop the thread.


On Feb 3, 2008, at 12:21 PM, Steve Christensen wrote:

> 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
>
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