Re: Topmodel2 (again)

In article <04209eea4d.martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Martin Wuerthner
<spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In message <4dea5ef597john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> John Cartmell
> <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > In article <405554ea4d.martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Martin Wuerthner
> > <spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Yes, but it is exceedingly expensive and does not solve the copyright
> >> issue. You need a licence from the owners in any case, and if they are
> >> willing to give it to you, they can just as well give you the source
> >> code. Reverse engineering is only useful in the rare situation that the
> >> owners are happy to grant you a licence but have lost the source code.
> >
> > In that case one might want to look at rebuilding the alternative
> > (DaVinci) which was not developed further (AFAIK) because the source was
> > lost.

> Was it? Source code usually only gets lost when the publisher of the
> application has lost interest far earlier. Of course, once the source code
> has been lost, this can be used as an easy excuse to explain why the
> application is no longer developed. The source code to ArtWorks was nearly
> lost and only recovered by chance inside CC, but that was years after they
> had decided to abandon the product anyway.

I contacted the author/publishers of DaVinci some years ago and was told that
further development had been cancelled because of code loss following a
harddrive failure. There were more details but it's quite some time ago and I
forget exactly what was inolved.

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
Qercus - the best guide to RISC OS computing

.

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