What interoperability actually means

It is an ugly word and it is the concept holding up much of what you can lawfully do with the software of a device you bought.

This is not legal advice.

The idea#

Interoperability is the ability of two independently created programs to work together. The European legislator decided, back in the nineties, that this ability deserved protection: without it, any manufacturer could use copyright in their software to stop anything foreign from talking to their products.

Where it is written#

Article 6 of Directive 2009/24/EC, on the legal protection of computer programs. In Spain, Articles 100.5 and 100.6 of the Intellectual Property Act.

They permit the acts necessary to obtain the information indispensable to achieve interoperability of an independently created program.

The article almost nobody knows#

Article 8 of that same Directive:

Any contractual provisions contrary to [the interoperability article] shall be null and void.

Translated: a contract cannot take that right away from you. If your television's EULA says you may do nothing with its software, that particular clause is unenforceable as far as interoperability goes.

It is one of the few times the European legislator says outright "this cannot be contracted away".

What it does not cover#

And here is the limit, which is worth being equally clear about:

• It does not permit copying the manufacturer's program.
• It does not permit distributing their firmware.
• It does not permit circumventing content protection, which is governed by a different rule entirely.
• It is not a blank cheque to do anything at all with a device.

How it fits this project#

We document how to make a television work with the software its owner chooses, using an interface the manufacturer itself publishes, without touching its firmware. That sits at the centre of what interoperability protects.

And by the same reasoning, everything outside that is outside our scope. Not out of timidity, but because the legal protection ends precisely there. The full limits are here.