Why did Microsoft do this?

[WatchDogRsrv]

Happy Friday everyone,

These past few weeks my team and I have been really baffled at why Microsoft allows the things they do pertaining to the .Net framework.

I've always asked myself why ,if .Net is so great, hasnt Microsoft written Office or some other major program in it?

Well the answer is quiet obvious. Because they made it so darn easy to decompile and read someone elses code.

Sure they have that obfuscator, which doesnt work. All it was meant to do was confuse the person trying to look at your code. But if they want it bad enough, they could figure it out..its all there.

So write now we are coming up with our own solution. We are encrypting our .dll's and creating a C++ program that launches are app, after decrypting.

Its obviously more indepth than this, but it keeps people from looking at it.

So my question. Did Microsoft REALLY mean to let this happen?

Couldnt they be sued if for instance, Infragistics for example, found out that people were looking right at their code and copying how they dont things without buying the product?

What's your opinion. Mine is: I think its the stupidest move ever! Sure its easy, and there might be a reason for it..but WHY?

Have a great weekend.

WatchDogRsrv

[Delprat]

Nothing new... remember of QuickBasic and VisualBasic... Both always allowed compilation into "pseudo-code", easy to disassemble... (and for VB before version 5, "pseudo-code" was mandatory)

The .NET is nothing else that this "function" ported into C/C++/C#/J++/ASP.

Silly ? Stupid ?... maybe.

But you don't need the .NET for making apps, the win32 api is "harder", but at least as powerful.

In fact, .NET is meant to be used for things as "web-based" applications ; and such applications are intended to be kept "strongly closed" into a web-server... (and not distributed...)

Moreover, such apps are linked to "web-content", such as a database (typical case are "online stores").

If you ever get such an app, you could disassemble it : it will not hurt the business... (for exemple, french railways uses .NET-based apps... but disassembling them will not allow you to print the tickets)

bye

[egrath]

hi,

It's not a problem of .NET it's a entire problem of a computer system that everyone who want's to know how a application works on the sourcelevel can discover this.

even if you write native code using c/c++ you always have the option of using a disassembler and read the asm source. msil is also a kind of assembler language so it makes no difference. ok with ildasm you can also see what classes a program has defined but.... who cares.

Egon

[WatchDogRsrv]

Thanks for the replys.

It may not be that big of a deal. I just have to think about this when I built my applications. For instance I am encrypting data on the client to send to the server, its plain to see the keys I use to ecrypting and decrypting the message.

To me the big problem is Microsoft is making such a huge deal about Pirating their software but they still allow people that use .Net to have their code read and copied.

Just seems kinda strange to allow this.

And, from what I have tried and seen, decompiling a C++ app will only give you asm code, which does nothing if you dont know asm.

However, decompile a .Net app and you get the exact code, classes and methods that the programmer used...which is a HUGE difference.

Thanks again for the replies, have a great week.

Edited August 2, 2005 by WatchDogRsrv