Data Protocol and User-developed Software
X*PRESS kept the data stream protocol secret, revealing the specifications to certain software developers only under non-disclosure agreements.
Several users, unhappy with the limited capabilities of the PC software provided by X*PRESS or using computer systems for which X*PRESS did not provide any software, attempted to reverse-engineer the protocol of the data stream. This effort was helped by the fact that the Amiga version of X*Press X*Change was distributed on a floppy disk that had, by mistake, some random portions of the software source code on some of its unused blocks. The accidentally released source code provided some details and terminology used to describe the protocol, and other parts were purely reverse-engineered. It was never completely clear whether it was legal to publish or use the various forms of underground software that circulated among a small community of users.
Read more about this topic: X*Press X*Change
Famous quotes containing the word data:
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—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)