Cracking Closed source code

[rado_london]

Hi.
I have always been wandering can we crack the code of windows or any othe closed source program?????

[neowolf]

Obviously not, if that were the case the propriety software business would not be worth the billions it currently is.

[Lord Illidan]

You are referring to reverse engineering...which is illegal.

[christhemonkey]

An even if you could, then, Microsoft (or whoever) would definately own you for stealing their IP!

[whynotchevron]

Agreed that would be illegal , so what is MS afraid of with all these deals with novell ( and trying to get others RedHat ) of we won't sue you if you won't sue us , what are they hiding
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story...16-26-NW-LL-NV
I can think of one item : Quoted form a programer :
MS "Plagierized" Longhorn from SELinux
Much of the security related feature set of Longhorn, was originally done by NSA/Redhat/Debian for SELinux. MS Plagiarized much of this for Vista/Longhorn. This novel Concept of users logging in with limited rights by default, under Vista, is pretty much the way my Linux Distro worked 10 years ago, and my Unix OS worked 20 years ago. MS may be a bit a head in some of the flashy gui, spoon feed the novice, but pro's can take any one of a number of excellent OS's and build a good system that would meet or exceed these requirements. Linux being Open Source is where a Large amount of OS R&D projects get done, and new ideas find there way into Computer Science. MS, and others then adapt these ideas to the commercial / corporate world and get them to the point where "Joe Six Pack" or "Homer Simpson" can use them with a good set of reasonable default settings. The MS operating system, can still load a Posix sub-system, or though other techniques be made to run on par with a Linux/*nix box.

[Kernel Sanders]

Hi.
I have always been wandering can we crack the code of windows or any othe closed source program?????

If you're asking whether its possible, then I severely doubt it. Put it this way, by the time you have successfully reverse engineered Windows Vista so that you have the complete source code, Steve Ballmers son will be announcing *Windows 2050 Even More DRM Edition!*

[rado_london]

If you're asking whether its possible, then I severely doubt it. Put it this way, by the time you have successfully reverse engineered Windows Vista so that you have the complete source code, Steve Ballmers son will be announcing *Windows 2050 Even More DRM Edition!*

Thanks for the answers people! That is sad. So there is a good way to put off MS from the market but its gonna take me 50 years to do it

[IYY]

Reverse engineering is not cracking. There is no way to get the actual code from the compiled ones and zeroes. You can just guess how it was done, and try to do it in a similar way. If you want to see an example of this, look at ReactOS http://www.reactos.com/en/index.html

[rado_london]

I wish we could steal it from the MS labs as there is no other way to get it.

[IYY]

Um... Why? GNU/Linux has very little to benefit from Microsoft code. The most you might get is proper NTFS write support and maybe some small improvements to Samba. Hardly a reason to insert code into Ubuntu which will cause it to get sued for millions by Microsoft.