Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!uwmcsd1!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!urbsdc!aglew
From: aglew@urbsdc.Urbana.Gould.COM
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Software Distribution
Message-ID: <28200195@urbsdc>
Date: 5 Sep 88 13:23:00 GMT
References: <891@taux01.UUCP>
Lines: 18
Nf-ID: #R:taux01.UUCP:891:urbsdc:28200195:000:743
Nf-From: urbsdc.Urbana.Gould.COM!aglew    Sep  5 08:23:00 1988


>Yes, what we need is a high-level machine language that we can
>translate our programs into and then is sufficiently general that we
>can compile *that* efficiently into native machine code.
>
>How about C, the portable assembler?  :-) :-) :-)
>
>		    pardo@cs.washington.edu

Treating this seriously - C isn't acceptable because the customer
can take the C code and modify it relatively easily.

Why do we want intermediate code distributions? So that software
vendors can sell code from which it is difficult or impossible to
reproduce the original HLL code, therefor making it difficult for
their customers to "steal" software products.
    The rest of us, who aren't software vendors, can and should 
continue to distribute source code.