Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!uvaarpa!mcnc!rti!bcw
From: bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Why unix doesn't catch on
Summary: Techies vs end-users
Message-ID: <2882@rti.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 89 02:26:14 GMT
References: <7632@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <256@jwt.UUCP>
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC
Lines: 56

In article <256@jwt.UUCP>, john@jwt.UUCP (John Temples) writes:
> In article <7632@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> C. Antonio Romero writes:
> >Well, for one thing, not all Unixes come with C compilers.  I suppose
> >one could require that they did, but this would swell the size of Unix.
> 
> True, but I can't imagine anyone having something as powerful as Unix without
> having a C compiler to go with it.  It seems like a waste.

I certainly can't imagine -my- wanting Unix without having a C compiler
to go with it.  But then we are both techies.  Many end-user type people
wouldn't know what a C compiler was if it hit them over the head - they
don't know or -want- to know how to write code (please, no flames, I know
not all end-users are like this, but many certainly are - I even know and
like some of them).  

The problem from the point of view of a software -vendor- is that many
Unix vendors -do not- sell their Unix with a C compiler (it is often an
added-cost option).  Also, even if the distribution contains a C compiler,
you can't count on being able to use it - the customer may have deleted
it, or not know how to run it (shell scripts don't work so well if the
compiler doesn't use all the switches your compiler did). 

Many people seem perfectly happy to run their machines without any kind
of programming language at all - or at most a Basic interpreter.  We may
find this a waste, but -they- don't - and until they do, the market is
unlikely to provide them with things they don't feel they need.

> Gimpel Software is making their PC-Lint product available in something called
> "shrouded source".  It lets you compile the software on your target machine,
> without being able to make sense of the source code.  I don't know how viable
> this technique is, but it seems like it could have possibilities.

Frankly, I'm skeptical.  It is probably possible to hide things from
nontechnical users this way, but they aren't the people that the software
developer in this scenario would be worried about.  At best it would slow
down a technical person - the question would then become whether it would
be cheaper to figure out how the program worked, or to duplicate it.  I
submit that the interesting question is not figuring out the program in
detail, but trying to identify any interesting "kernel" algorithms that
give the program much of its utility/ease-of-use/whatever.  Judging by
how many people have made quite a bit of sense out of machine code, I
would say that "shrouded source", being several levels of abstraction
higher (though still not as convenient as commented source), would make 
the task much easier.

This doesn't mean that every software company will make the same
choices - Gimpel Software, mentioned above, appears to have decided that
the technical developments they had done for their PC-lint program were
worth protecting a little, but not very much.  Obviously this is something
that each company has to address - whether to provide complete source, or
nothing but binaries.  It's not obvious to me that you can expect a one-
size-fits-all strategy (though as noted above, given the structure of the 
PC and Unix markets, I don't see how a developer can rely on the end-user
necessarily having a C compiler unless the "end-users" are C programmers!).

							Bruce C. Wright