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.php3?ltsn=2006-11-22-016-26-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:twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted::twisted: :twisted: 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.

[rado_london]

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.

Tonight I am out of order I just wanna do something bad to MS as today the college server crashed and I lost 8 pages of coursework:(
As u guess the server is Win2003 and the clients are XP Pro.

[IYY]

Giving MS the opportunity to sue Linux is not something bad for them, it'd be the greatest gift they've received in years.

[Xzallion]

Reverse engineering isn't illegal, though it does have some rules. I got most of this from the ReactOS site, but it has to be done using the "clean room engineering" method, where whoever reverse engineers the code, can not write the code for the new program. They have to write out a spec sheet or something, probably a flowchart or other programming diagram, and pass that on to someone else. It all has to be carefully documented also.

Reverse engineering should never be done for revenge or out of spite, but should be used more for educational/learning purposes.

[RAOF]

Additionally, it is entirely possible to take the binaries and decompile them into source code. You don't (generally) get any sensible variable names, or comments, so it's really difficult to read, but it's possible.

[jpeddicord]

Wasn't the Windows 2K source code leaked at some point?

I remember seeing a story on Digg about how frequently the Microsoft developers swear in their source code. :p

[cantormath]

Wasn't the Windows 2K source code leaked at some point?

I remember seeing a story on Digg about how frequently the Microsoft developers swear in their source code. :p

I believe so, I have also seen a few gnu looking windows like system, but I can remember the name of it. It looks just like win 2000 and it runs win apps, but isnt windows.

[adam.tropics]

Reverse engineering should never be done for revenge or out of spite, but should be used more for educational/learning purposes.


.....but in the case of ATI/AMD we're prepared to make an exception!

[IYY]

Reverse engineering isn't illegal, though it does have some rules. I got most of this from the ReactOS site, but it has to be done using the "clean room engineering" method, where whoever reverse engineers the code, can not write the code for the new program. They have to write out a spec sheet or something, probably a flowchart or other programming diagram, and pass that on to someone else. It all has to be carefully documented also.


Not if you have software patents.

[JimmyJazz]

reverse enginering is not always illegal

[JimmyJazz]

Giving MS the opportunity to sue Linux is not something bad for them, it'd be the greatest gift they've received in years.

umm you can't sue a kernel.

[wieman01]

Java allows you to do just that... So from a technical perspective this is not an issue as far as Java is concerned, however, it's illegal if the software is closed-source.

Did that once for my own source-code after losing the source files (harddisk crash - pure stupidity). I doubt it's possible with C(+).

[Sutekh]

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.
Indeed.

But even SAMBA have come out and said that they only wish to see Microsoft code, so they can make GNU/Linux interoperative. They don't actually want to use it. They want to use their own code.

That's the whole point of GNU/Linux, they were written from scratch.

[bonzodog]

There is a lot of samba and gaim that was done through reverse engineering. Also some h/w drivers are reverse engineered for Linux.
Reverse engineering has been used extensively where communication with an external protocol/API has been needed in Linux.

[RAOF]

Java allows you to do just that... So from a technical perspective this is not an issue as far as Java is concerned, however, it's illegal if the software is closed-source.

Did that once for my own source-code after losing the source files (harddisk crash - pure stupidity). I doubt it's possible with C(+).

It is possible, just much more difficult and unreliable - assembly code has much less metadata (ie: none) than Java's bytecode.