Reverse Engineering, legit design strategy or intentional robbery?

[Pds314]

Things that the U.S. got because of blatant reverse-engineering in WWII alone:

-Nuclear power, weapons, and engines.

-Every single spacecraft ever launched.

-The B2 Stealth bomber, stealth.

-Jet engines

-computers

-the microwave oven

-full-functionality radar

Most of these came from Britain and the U.S. sharing technology. Some came after the war by looking at axis designs.

Reverse-engineering has been critical to every nation on Earth. Why else would, say, China be within 20 years, technologically speaking, of the U.S. when some remote countries are centuries behind in most respects. This is one of my pet peeves about the Civilization series is that trading or warring countries don't reverse-engineer each other's technology.

[psyper]

I don't understand the issue here at all. How do you get hold of peoples designs in the first place??

If they post a screenshot saying hey look at my cool shuttle/spacestation/ssto then they are sharing the image with everyone publicly - of course they expect people to try and copy it - I post screenshots knowing full well and actually encourage people to take bits that they liked and incorporate them in to their own design - i would be honoured if someone did that and even say - I liked psypers suchnsuch so much i added it to my spacestation; look!

a lot of my designs come from scott manley - I copied the hanger system on his spacestation in his reusable space program tutorial and his mun to station lifters too. He created that tutorial for the specific point of helping novices with ksp - I think he pretty much expects people to copy some of his plans in getting to space - I have since made improvements on the designs since which are slowly upgrading the older kit.

If you upload a craft file then all bets are off - what is the point of uploading a craft file if you don't want people to use it - its not like they can open the code and see the ship in their head matrix style!! You can't exactly tell them - you can load this in to your VAB/SPH but you can't use it.

If you don't want people using your designs then don't screenshot, don't youtube it and certainly don't post the craft file!

[mythic_fci]

As long as you don't just rename a design and pass it as your own, or make a design that is (almost) exactly the same, it's alright.

One of my shuttlecraft which is registered with Shuttlecraft Systems Inc. takes ideas from the SSI Jian shuttlecraft. However, several aspects were changed and the wing placement modified, making it eligible as a new craft.

[OrtwinS]

Copyrights and patents are ways to create artificial scarcity for intellectual property so that we can economically encourage creative types. It can be argued whether this is a net benefit to society, or whether the time limits on such things are reasonable, but it is a form of scarcity.

I suppose someone could post a .craft file with a license for use, but I personally think that would be silly.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants." ~ Newton

Well it happens all the time in real life

The only thing missing from the American moon landings was a swastika on the actual rocket

note: I think you might not give enough credit to the 20+(!!!) years of work and development in between the end of WW2 and the moon landings.

Ideas are meant to spread. not to be kept closed and like a dragon hoard.

-snip- I believe that the moment that we stop learning from each other, we invite chaos and waste into our lives. That is not to say that we should not attempt things (especially in KSP) on our own first, rather understand that someone else may have your "ah-ha" moment in some aspect of their craft. Continue discussing, this is a good thread.

I love all of you.

Only physical objects can be owned (and even that is up for debate), ideas and information can not. (One can attempt to keep them secret though)

Copyright, patents and other 'Intellectual' 'Property' have limited use to discourage/limit rude and unaccredited use and/or profiting by and for others.

The last decade the Copyright Cult lobby is going crazy though. It is a battle they have already lost, but will still bring a lot of us individuals a lot of **** to deal with.

Reverse engineering is the most polite version of using other peoples ideas: to learn and improve yourself. It disturbs me that anyone could think badly of it.

This world surely will go to hell when we attempt to attach 'object' properties to ideas and information... Oh wait... ****

Edited March 4, 2014 by OrtwinS
typo's and misquotes

[Highlad]

If you are able to download a craft file, it means that the owner has released it to the public. As such, they are giving you permission to mess with it, learn from it and even incorporate it into your designs.

But if, for example, someone posts a craft file privately for their friends to learn from, then someone leaks it online. Then you download it, I would say that is wrong.

Generally though, if you take lots from a design that is not yours, you should give credit.

This is really just the same thing as copyright.

[MR4Y]

It's the base of R&D, or Ripoff & Duplicate

[Dkmdlb]

How could it possibly be stealing?

[Bshow]

I think reverse engineering is totally correct.It's a stupid limit to put,a way to learn something is always a good way.