Disassembling was Re: Machine-independent intermediate languages

[Knudsen]

In article <e6m10#2eDFfC=eric at snark.UUCP>, eric at 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."