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Hi Jos,

>Hi John. I am not a lawyer so I do not know what this act implies for Refox. However the idea of taking Refox to court does not quite make sense to me. They provide a product which helps you recover your source code from your exe if you have lost the original code. If someone misuses this tool then surely that person should be punished, not the tool maker? This would be the same as taking key manufacturers to court because someone used a master key to break into your house. And by the way, there are several decompilers for VFP apps around. Refox are not the only ones.

There are several decompilers and I think they should be all taken to court.

Usually when a developer makes a contract for a customer it'll contain a clause stipulating that it is forbidden to try to decompile, to copy for somebody else...

I understand that a decompiler have its place and that place is only for allowing a developer to get back his code. Not for a thief to get somebody else's code.

It would be so easy if makers of ReFox had a conscience.

Here's how I see it. If the string "ReFox is not welcome in that application" is present as a comment in the first line for a given prg then ReFox would'nt work.

Really easy is'nt it? Do you think that makers of ReFox did'nt think about a similar solution?

I'm sure they did but why would they do it. A business goal is to make money. And more and more businesses don't have anything else in mind then that goal. Who cares about principles anymore? If no laws are broken that it must mean that it's ok.

The only time that I would've needed ReFox is for an app that I had to support and that was made by another developer. For my app I just hope that I'll never need it. I do back-ups regularly.

Makers of ReFox know that many Fox developers will never need their product so they made sure that developers know that their app is at risk when not protected with ReFox.

If no business is sued because they let illegal things happen then it sends a signal to others that it's ok to build those tools.

Many can't be sued because it's hard to trace the developer. For ReFox it's quite easy to find them

So by warning ReFox to change its tactics it would be an interesting beginning and a clear message sent to others that they're looking for trouble if they continue making such tools.

And after that they could concentrate on finding individual makers of those decompilers. In recent cases it's been proven that anybody can be found on the net. It's just a matter of putting the energy and money to do it.