[IANAL] Re: [PHP-DEV] Debugger protocol

According to the DMCA [ § 1201(f) ], legal precedent [ see http://home.joeysmith.com/~joey/sony-v-connectix.html ], and common practice, there is nothing that prohibts a "clean room implementation". (http://www.boreworms.com/karellen/rev-eng.html). That said: PHP *is* open. The Zend debugger is not. It is a commercial product, developed by people who know the internals of PHP/Zend *very* well. There is nothing that precludes you from dropping the same time investment into the PHP code as the Zend folks have. If you do invest this amount of time, I feel pretty sure that you could see how to develop a debugger, but this is just a guess. I have been told that the Zend Debugger license explicitly prohibits such activity. I, for one, do not begrudge Zend trying to make a little money. Just because some of us manage to live an idealistic world does not mean that everyone can afford to do so. Anyone can take the PHP code and do the same. Not everyone will have the same degree of credibility, though. BTW, the PHP3 debugger was NOT really a debugger, IMNSHO. Not having used the Zend debugger, I cannot make any claims. I do not recommend trying to do this. IANAL. I would like to see people's hard work rewarded. When one of my companies makes me rich and famous, one of my first actions will be to turn around to those people OUTSIDE of Zend that also deserve a reward for hard work that has kept me employed for 3 years or more. =) On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Varun Shoor wrote the following to php-dev@lists.php.net : > Hi there, > I have been working on an Open Source IDE for PHP but from > what i heard in the #php the debugger protocol is no more open in > PHP4? And only binaries are distributed and above all it is illegal to > reverse engineer the protocol. Why in the world is this done?... I > mean PHP is supposed to be open, right?.. The protocol was open in > PHP3 but now i hear that it is closed.. isnt this a perfect > monoply?.. Everyone knows an IDE is nothing without a good debugger > and if i cant add it then all of my time devoted to this thing will go > waste.. Someone care to tell me a way out? > Regards, > > Varun Shoor > > --------------------------------------- > www.DeskCode.com > (Programmers Resource) >