Reverse engineering is not illegal. It's done all the time. Otherwise nVidia would have pursued something after the Nouveau project.

Same with the Samba guys, and so many other different Open Source projects.

Heck even something like Open office could be considered having some sort of 'reverse engineering' because they support Microsoft's formats.

Now if you go into some place and bonk someone over the head or send hookers and blow to them to bribe the original engineers to give you details then build a like product, that's illegal.

I say Hookers and blow for all!

slaapliedje

Edit: For the record. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse...inary_software