Xref: utzoo comp.arch:6633 comp.lang.c:13298 comp.lang.misc:2000 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!hc!lanl!cmcl2!rutgers!att!ihlpl!knudsen From: knudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen) Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc Subject: Disassembling was Re: Machine-independent intermediate languages Summary: Understanding, disassembly Message-ID: <7226@ihlpl.ATT.COM> Date: 14 Oct 88 20:31:31 GMT References: <358@istop.ist.co.uk> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois Lines: 22 In article , eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: > Peter ("Have you hugged your wolf today?") deSilva seems to think the point > of a uMIIL is to provide a medium for selling software, a way for it to be > distributed in machine-independent form that nosy hackers can't read and > modify. > Excuse me, but I thought the security problem in for-sale software was to guard > it from unauthorized *copying* and *use*, not unauthorized *understanding. Well, some vendors are afraid of people (competitors?) understanding their code. Tandy Radio Shack software usually includes in the copyright notice "customer is explicitly forbidden to disassemble the software." Few serious computerists have been deterred by this notice (I know of one who was for a while), but they are afraid to post the disassemblies on public BBSes. There is a question of "fair use" here, since sometimes you have to hack and patch a program to make it useful on your system. -- Mike Knudsen Bell Labs(AT&T) att!ihlpl!knudsen "Lawyers are like handguns and nuclear bombs. Nobody likes them, but the other guy's got one, so I better get one too."