It's a bit more complicated, you can reverse-engineer if the company is not willing to give the protocol, for interoperability purpose only and you are not allowed to publish the raw information you obtained during the reverse, but only a new interoperable product.
Journalistic treatment has probably distorted the facts so someone should probably go read the actual decision.
Huh, what law would you break by publishing the reverse engineered details? They're not protected by copyright or patents. Do you mean it's possible for a court to uphold some license or contract terms where you promised not to do it?
> Les informations nécessaires à l'interopérabilité n'ont pas déjà été rendues facilement et rapidement accessibles aux personnes mentionnées au 1° ci-dessus
> Informations required for interoperability, haven't been easily and quickly accessible.
This one is pretty easy to argue, unless you reverse engineer an application that implement a standardized protocol / format.
> ces actes sont limités aux parties du logiciel d'origine nécessaires à cette interopérabilité.
> You can only reverse engineer the parts needed for interoperability
Make sense.
> Les informations ainsi obtenues ne peuvent être communiquées à des tiers sauf si cela est nécessaire à l'interopérabilité du logiciel créé de façon indépendante ;
> Obtained informations cannot be shared with others unless it's required for interoperability.
Should be easy to workaround by making an open source library.
Here is a rough translation, I'm sorry to tell that I have a hard time parsing the original in the context of OSS too.
IV. The reproduction of the code of the software or the translation of the shape of the code is not subject to the author's authorization when the reproduction or translation in the sense of 1° and 2° of article L. 122-6 is essential to get the information necessary to the interoperability of an independently created software with other softwares provided the following conditions are met:
1) those actions are fulfilled by the person with the right to use one copy of the software or on his behalf by someone empowered to this end;
2) the informations needed for interoperability have not been easily and quickly available to the people mentioned at 1° above;
3) and those actions are limited to the part of the original software needed to this interoperabilty
The information obtained this way [disassembly] shall not be:
1) Neither used for any other purpose than interoperability of the independently created software
2) Neither communicated to thirds parties unless that is necessary for the interoperability of the independently created software
3) Neither used for development, production or sale of a software whose expression is substantially similar or for any other act infringing the author's copyright
Journalistic treatment has probably distorted the facts so someone should probably go read the actual decision.