I wrote:
> In my youth I learned a great many programming tricks by studying other
> people's code, including object code when source was not available.

William Chops Westfield <billw@CISCO.COM> replied:
> While this more legal and perhaps more moral than stealing code, it's not
> really any more ethical.  You have not paid to be taught, even if only by
> studying the internals that you were not meant to see.

I beg to differ about the ethics.  If I want to build toasters I can borrow
a friend's book on toasters.  Or I can take apart his toaster and examine how
it works.  I haven't paid to be taught in either case, nor have I invested
the engineering effort necessary to build a toaster from scratch.  In the
first case, the writer of the book didn't make any money teaching me about
toasters.  In the second, the manufacturer of the toaster wasn't paid to
teach me about it.  I doubt that you will claim that either approach is
unethical (assuming I have my friend's permission), yet that seems to be the
standard you are applying to software.

Historically in the US, it has been considered lawful (and presumably ethical)
to study other manufacturers devices.  This encourages progress, and is
precisely the point of the patent system.

Cheers,
Eric