Andre Abelian wrote:
>
> Hi to all ,
>
> Speaking about reverse engineering I do not see any problem
> breaking the code "if you can"  if you can't you may find
> some one that can . learning more about architecture
> is very good idea code protection is part of architecture so how
> come it suddenly became {OT}. I personally found that many hackers
> know about MCU lot more then any high end engineer and most
> of them  write their own code. Knowing more about code protection
> bit it doesn't mean preparing to still some one else's code.
>
> Andre

  (To use something quite relevant to one of my projects, here): What
about when the design someone else makes is inefficient, ridiculously
limited, and uses far more resources than your design, requires a
software driver, and is otherwise obnoxious and quite overpriced?
(We've seen Compaq clone the IBM PC, of course, for another example, and
there were some barriers they had to use internally to do this. <G>)

  I'm not reverse engineering that machine (Don't have one.  Bought one
for a friend, but had it shipped directly to him.)  It's pretty darned
obvious what this machine does, and it's pretty obvious that for about
1/4 its price - maybe less, I can build a machine that does the same
job, doesn't steal a serial port (rare on the target machine), doesn't
need any software driver (so it'll work under ANY OS), and should
otherwise be more flexible and easier to cope with.

  I wouldn't crack their code, that would be theft - but I feel free to
make my product able to use a similar (perhaps the same) macro setup,
though with 20 times more macros as I put some real memory in there <G>,
and in general easier to use, fairly different, and probably a really
effective competitor to the other widget.  (And it'll be GPL'ed.)  They
may not be very happy about it - but if they'd paid attention to what
the market was asking for, I wouldn't be interested in making this, I'd
just buy one & be happy I didn't have to spend any of my time <G>

  IMHO, There are places where copy protection is irrelevant, places
where it's a very good idea, and places where it seriously hurts and
annoys the user (Such as printer port anti-theft widgets.)  It stops the
honest investigative learner just as often - and usually for far less
time - than it stops the criminal hacker.  Easy enough to put in "Easter
Eggs" to prove if someone used your code & thus violated your copyright,
as one alternative...

  Mark