@osman: no hate brother, but it seems that you are over reacting to this post (which was intended as a lesson rather than a sermon).

We all live in different parts of the world. Where i come from (and judging from your name, where you come from) there is no such thing as piracy or stealing. It would be very difficult for someone to sue us over here => practically impossible though you never know (like if you blatantly ripped off something huge)

Fact is that you can go the movie or software shop and pick up any movie or software for less than $1. Yeah less than one dollar. Can you imagine?

What you should understand is that people in the West do not have that liberty. They have to pay for the rights => THE QUALITY! This is one of the reasons third-world countries suffer from quality apps/sites/PEOPLE. This is the reason people are careful over there. If their market openly supported piracy it might be a different story, and they would not be worldly known as the quality providers. That will never happen matey….

@

The worst outcome would be to see your name plastered over the internet (like the guys who ripped off Flash Games for the Olympics). Your whole credibility would suffer, at least where it counts with the big boys in the western world.

I like to learn from people (anyone out there who is intelligent and has something to say). Dude its not about getting dramatic or being sensitive of over reacting (as Muslims are overly dramatic and sensitive / Americans are simple with approach, logical and practical).

All he is saying is simply: If you rip something off, cover it up real good by not posting about it in the forums. Simple as e=mc2

Be a good open-minded person bro…Learn from these guys and gain their respect. They will respect you if you are worth it man, that i can guarantee..

This would be different than me getting the VCR, opening it up, taking the chip that generates the menu and sticking it into my product (not knowing how it works). That is what these kids are doing.

I’ll leave you with a very,very,very old posting from an author known as Mentor, from an old rag called Phrack. (Doug, you may be too young to know this one).. The Hacker’s Manifesto : http://records.viu.ca/~soules/media112/hacker.htm

Short:
“It’s morally ok to walk in there because their place is not secure! So please, go ahead and walk into someone’s place when they are not around and learn how they decorate their house, but don’t steal!”

Long:
Just because SWF is not a secure format doesn’t make the morality of decompilation an irrelevant issue. SWF is a binary format after all, and if people really want to share their code with you, they can turn on View Source (in the case of Flex projects) or publish their code. With proper tools, I can decompile even native executables. Maybe I should start using your argument when I get accused of doing that? Please don’t equate SWF with HTML and try to turn the act of decompilation into a mere act of clicking on View Source. HTML is a file authored, saved and deployed in text format. Could you please tell me how easy it is for you to peek at the code without the use of a decompilation software? If decompilation software is like a browser and the act is so acceptable, maybe we should ask Adobe to bundle that with Flash? Just think how ridiculous such suggestion would be (or maybe not?) You simply do not have any idea of how many people out there deploying Flash apps on their sites today are oblivion of the fact that their SWF can be decompiled and their work can be peeked at.

And lets not forget, the original intention of decompilation is for people to recover their lost work (or so they say).

If we use real life as an example, we might see (or I hope we will) how laughable some of the points you raised are: You got yourself a lockpick so you can open your door when you lock yourself out, that doesn’t imply to you that it’s ok to go around other people’s house and try that, even though they are not home and you have the best intention of going in there just to learn how they decorate their place!

And please stop using the argument that their place is not secure so it’s ok for you to do that! And perhaps consider refrain from calling out on the next kid who get into other’s house to steal a thief! Just let the folks who don’t even think getting into others’ house is an ok thing to do that.

So my point is simply that when you are involved in something with so many gray areas, it’s probably good to just do it quietly with good intent in heart (just so you can relieve yourself of any guilt that may come of it). I find it ridiculous for people to jump out and start saying things with things like (excuse me for the extra drama added):

“yes, I decompile the shit out of things and it’s ok because I have the purest of intention but I wouldn’t do what you do there buddy because you are doing that in a malicious way so you should be condemned or be ridiculed at.”

“it’s harder for me to decompile than to write the code (essentially: I am too smart to decompile) even though I have and I can so you suck for not being able to do what I do.”

“SWF is not secure and what are you going to do about it? If it’s not secure, just like HTML! If you want to hide it, obfuscate your code buddy or I might look inside and that’s morally ok by me!”

That’s hitting my bogometer really good there.

In a technology where the code used to build it is so easily accessible, crying foul over a person jumping one small, easy hurdle to get a peek at some very insecure code doesn’t make any sense to me. Because if the company is that serious about code security, they could implement a SWF encryption solution so no one can decompile the code, end of story.

Using that code, and in what context, is a different matter. If a person went on a JavaScript forum with a snippet of AJAX code, and that javascript code had comments in it that pegged the code as originating from some well known application, and the poster was obviously trying to use the code from that application in his own project, without explaining how and why he was using those snippets, without giving due credit where credit is due, well that just stinks of parasitism.

And that I believe, is what rubs people like Doug and myself the wrong way. Not the fact that the code was decompiled, but that an attempt was made to use someone else’s work without giving due credit. That flies in the face of all the good intentions and community building that people like Doug and myself try so hard to foster, and it gets you a bloody nose if you try to hide it. Because it’s that kind of parasitic, vampiric, “take what you can and give nothing back” attitude that destroys whole communities, whole industries.

And that is what I will stand up and fight against with every word and in every forum that is appropriate. Because this really isn’t about decompilation at all. It’s about attitude.

Some people make a living based on their own technical knowledge of what they created. The fact is that you opened up their stuff without their consent, and thereby learning their “trade secrets” and cashed in on the new found knowledge indirectly later on (surely your synapses would have grown fatter after that). The act of decompiling levels the playing field, just as the act of selling pirated software in Asia do to the technical field in those areas. Pirated software have served a lot of people who flat out cannot afford to purchase those software and therefore learn it. I am sure those people can argue a lot about how they are only buying the pirated software to learn the tools and so that’s morally ok in their mind. Again, I am not saying what is right or wrong, but there are similarities in these scenarios and while you might think your idea of what makes decompiling moral and ok lies in the intent, the same argument can be applied to many things in life.

There is a difference between taking a clock apart to figure out how it works versus decompiling a piece of code. Decompiling is close to stealing a blueprint of a building because the blueprint (in this case the code) is built into the very fabric that makes the thing run (the software). How many of the people would feel ok if they tell them flat out you have decompiled their work just so you can learn? Why is decompiling not immoral when it could be someone’s bread and butter and it’s the technical advantage that they are cashing out on? These are some of the questions to think about, to venture into an area with so many gray areas, I think one should just go about doing it quietly with the best intent at heart, but not to carry a moral yardstick and start defining what’s right and wrong based on something made up in one’s mind and poke fun of others based on that. I could very well be purchasing pirated software to learn (again good intent there), blog about what I did and poke fun of the next guy who got caught for purchasing and using it for commercial purposes. But I am not so sure if I might not appear silly to others around me when I do that.

@Eric – I can see how there might be confusion that would lead to people calling me a hypocrite. I made fun of a guy asking for help with decompiled code, and then I presented a detailed session about how to decompile code. But in my mind these two things make perfect sense. So maybe I’m delusional, but here’s how I see it.

I did not make fun of the fact that the guy decompiled code. I made fun of WHY and HOW he decompiled the code. In my mind there is an important moral distinction between (1) blatantly trying to rip off someone else’s work and (2) using someone else’s work to further your skillset and increase your knowledge. I decompile code to learn. I never decompile code as a shortcut to solve a problem, or as a fast way to complete a project. I consider ripping off someone’s code and using it in your own project immoral. I consider ripping apart someone’s code to enhance your knowledge acceptable. Legally in terms of copyright law I assume there’s no such distinction (except that I would never use decompiled code in my projects, thus no true legal risk).

So if someone wants to make the argument that all decompiling is morally wrong and that I should be criticized for ever decompiling anything, they are free to do so. But that is not my position. I like to think that my distinction between what’s right and wrong about decompiling makes sense to others, but if not then I’m happy to stand on my own. It makes sense in my head at least