Shipping Executables

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:00:59 -0500, geremy condra quoted Banibrata Dutta
<banibrata.dutta at gmail.com>:

>> BTW for people who are non-believers in something being worth stealing
>> needing protection, need to read about the Skype client.

Pardon me for breaking threading, but the original post has not come 
through to my provider, only the reply from Geremy.

Many things are worth stealing and therefore need protection.

In any case, reverse engineering software is not theft. And even if it 
were, keeping the source code secret is no barrier to a competent, 
determined attacker or investigator. Skype is a good example: despite the 
lack of source code and the secret protocol, analysts were able to 
discover that TOM-Skype sends personally identifiable information, 
encryption keys and private messages back to central servers.

In my personal opinion, releasing closed source software is prima facie 
evidence that the software is or does something bad: leaking personal 
information, infringing somebody else's copyright or patent, or just 
being badly written. I'm not saying that every piece of closed source 
software is like that, but when you hide the source, the burden of proof 
is on you to prove that you're not hiding something unpleasant.



-- 
Steven