How can I make wordpress stop permalinking non wp

Question

How can I make my WordPress install stop taking over directories that it has nothing to do with?

I have a directory thats password protected via .htaccess and when it wasn't protected, I could access it, but now that it is, it throws a WordPress 404 page.

this is the existing WordPress .htaccess file

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

The directory I'm trying to protect is

/software/development/

Answer 1

WordPress should only kick in when the requested directory or file doesn't exist, so I'm assuming that you were relying on FancyIndexing to get a directory listing of /software/development? If so, then you should be able to stick a .htaccess file in that directory to turn off request rewriting:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
 RewriteEngine Off
</IfModule>