It is true that third parties have already written IL decompilers that transform IL back into source code. The only useful information in your source code that is not represented in the generated executable, is the comments and local variable names. This is the same for C# and VB .NET.

Some third parties are making "obfuscators" available that claim to take IL and transorm it into equivalent IL that works the same as the input program but which cannot be understood by developers. The next version of VS .NET (Everett) will include one of these. Here are some links:

http://www.preemptive.com/dotfuscator/dotclients.html

http://www.remotesoft.com/salamander/obfuscator.html


>I was talking with another developer last night and he indicated that C#/.Net has no mechanism to prevent source code from being pirated in a C# application. Does anyone know if this is true? Does the same issue apply to VB.Net also?