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Reverse engineering is allowed under French law, there are specific legal exemptions around that.

It's common to see EULA/license/contracts with clauses that prohibit reverse engineering, these clauses are void in France and many other jurisdictions.

Article L122-6-1 https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...

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IANAL but EU reverse engineering exception is granted for purposes of interoperability as I remember? Think API, protocol, file format.

You can't reverse engineer and share random internals.

In the EU, and probably elsewhere, there are entire engineering shops of which the one and only purpose is to reverse engineer competitors’ features and figure out a legal way to get around patents and replicate those features.

No interoperability there.

Some people I know do that for a living in the auto industry.

There is some variation within the EU, with different national laws. In French law at least you’re right: reverse engineering is allowed only for interoperability and you’re not allowed to distribute decompiled code.

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