World Programming Ltd (WPL) perceived that there would be a market for alternative software which would be able to execute application programs written in SAS Language.

It permits users to write and run application programs (also known as “scripts”), written in SAS programming language and enabling users to manipulate data.

3. The person having a right to use a copy of a computer program shall be entitled, without the authorisation of the rightholder, to observe, study or test the functioning of the program in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any element of the program if he does so while performing any of the acts of loading, displaying, running, transmitting or storing the program which he is entitled to do.

A person having a right to use a computer program should not be prevented from performing acts necessary to observe, study or test the functioning of the program, provided that those acts do not infringe the copyright in the program.

2. Expenditure under the current programming period incurred by the final date of eligibility for expenditure of that programming period and relating to operations covered by the first indent of point 2.1 and by point 3 of Rule No 11 of the Annex to Regulation (EC) No 1685/2000, including ex ante evaluations referred to in Article 85 of Regulation (EC) No 1698/2005, for the preparation of rural development programmes under the new programming period, shall be, subject to the conditions laid down in points 2.2 to 2.7 and 3 of that Rule, eligible under the technical assistance component in the current operational programmes or rural develo ...[+++]pment programming documents.

In fact, now the European Directive allows the making of a copy (a "back-up" in the industry jargon) and the correction of errors in programs and it alllows the reverse engineering of programs but only to the extent necessary to ensure the interoperability of independently created programs.