Tore. I didnt draw any conclusion from the Thinstall thread other than that there are some very smart people in the world.

The whole security of the distributable app issue that you brought up is, for me, a non-issue. All apps can be broken given enough time and money. On top of which, a lot of hacking is done not by decompiling an exe at all. If there is sufficient incentive for a hacker then they can hack the PC where the source code is or even simply get access via one of your less honest or unaware employees. These are techniques used by some of the most notorious hackers in the world, like Mitnick.

Your opinion that a new programming environment must be 100% secure is just that, an opinion. If that's one of your benchmarks to judge a dev tool by then thats fine, its your choice.

The car analogy you offer I think is also not right simply because MS are not suggesting you drop VFP because the source code is not protected and move to .Net whose source code is. That is not what their marketing proposition is with respect to .Net. (Everyone knows that MS's reasons for suggesting you move to .Net is grounded in solid technical and performance reasons - they want more money).

PS. In case any readers thinks I have gone over to the dark side, think again. VFP rocks :)



>Hi Jos,
>
>We may have drawn different conclusions/opinions from the thread. But still, even if the situation is that today the decompiling software is available, it is not shelfware. With .net I expect that a decompiler will be a very common tool after a while, and that is a very scary thought.
>
>By the way, please also read my other replies.
>
>>Tore. Thats not why I thought the thread was interesting. It's interesting as a real life drama, or dual, between two obviously extremely smart programmers.
>>
>>iro decompile .Net apps - do you honestly believe your VFP app is safe from decompilation??
>>
>>Either way, I dont think .Net's (or indeed any dev tools) future is dependent on whether a tiny minority of expert code crackers/hackers can decompile the end result exe. VFP has been around for years and years with nothing more than pseudo code as its protection. Even today the protection tools are not full-proof. Do you think the likes of those two programmers in the Thinstall thread could not decompile a "protected" VFP app within a few minutes?