Re: Decompile - Protecting source

Aaron,

As I understand it, that's exactly right. With an RPG/400 program, you can
get an MI listing when you compile, and that's pretty incomprehensible, with
all the variable names changed to internal values. If you could decompile an
RPG/ILE program, it would probably be worse, since you'd get W-code (if
that).

You could also use OPTIMIZE(*YES) on your compiles - it might obfuscate the
code even more, as a side-effect of the optimization process.

Mind you, I'd think it would be pretty easy to draw up a very simple
'contract' which they can sign which simply promises not to attempt to
reverse-engineer or decompile the code - you might not need a lawyer to get
involved with that, and they'd be hard-pressed to justify not signing it.

Rory


On 9/1/06, albartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>From what I understand about decompiling, because I have seen it on Java
forums before, it could only ever give you machine generated variable
names
and the like (i.e. instead of CUSTNUM it would be @V000001 - which would
make it hard to make sense of).

Right now I am not convinced that my code would be "safe" without a
license
agreement because it sounds like there ARE some ways to decompile or
somehow
reveal the contents of a program.

Thanks for your response Rory,
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Rory Hewitt
Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 12:13 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: Decompile - Projecting source

Aaron,

It may be possible for someone to decompile your source, but the cost to
do
so would probably be prohibitive.

Rory

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