decompiling (was NBBY)

[Chris Torek]

>In article <15348 at mimsy.UUCP> I wrote (half kidding)
>>1) obtain source .... 1) may be achieved by `decompiling' objects.

In article <583 at redsox.UUCP> campbell at redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes:
>Note that every UNIX license I've seen contains an explicit prohibition
>against disassembling, reverse compiling, or reverse engineering the objects.
>
>Also, the national speed limit is 55 (ok, 65 in some places).

(The juxtaposition of these two items indicates that he is half
kidding, but I am going to respond anyway....)

Corporate lawyers would legislate the sky to be green, the earth to be
flat, and the sun to revolve around the moon, if they thought they
could get away with it.  (Some of them probably *believe* two of those
statements anyway.)  There are laws in some places against walking down
the street with an ice cream cone in your pocket on Sunday.  Bills have
been proposed (but, fortunately, never passed) to set pi to 3 or 4.
And, of course, AT&T would like you to believe that, if you want to
change the message of the day, you should pay them to do it instead.

There comes a time when one must use one's own judgement as to what is
morally or ethically correct.  In this case, if all I wanted to do were
to play with a system that I had bought, I would feel quite justified
in disassembling object code.  Indeed, I did do such a thing with my
TRS-80 (model I level II) lo these many years ago.  Of course, when I
bought it, I did not sign an agreement promising not to disassemble;
but I suspect the same may be true of many Unix buyers.

(Now, if you intended to redistribute, that would be another matter
entirely.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris