Re: Obfuscator and Decompiler

From: Jonathan Pierce (jpierce_at_nyc.rr.com)
Date: 07/13/04 

Date: 13 Jul 2004 05:38:16 -0700

andreseibel@hotmail.com (Andre) wrote in message news:<6af05d73.0407121631.c9d8623@posting.google.com>...
> Remember that you asked Lutz to charge for Reflector because it makes
> it much harder to sell your tool (strange enough since Reflector is
> not even targeting to-disk-decompiler users). That is silently
> admitting that with Reflector you actually "get more than what you pay
> for" ;-).
>

Andre,

The reason I asked Lutz to charge for his tool is so that he could
justify spending more time supporting it and correcting problems with
the code that it generates. I personally still feel that it is a
mistake for any developer to spend time debugging code that is
generated incorrectly, other than to isolate the issue and report it
so it can be fixed. This type of debugging is extremely time
consuming, especially if you don't have the original correct code to
compare. Without fixing the bug and regenerating the code, the
developer is exposed to multiple instantiations of the same bug, and
wastes more time tracking down dependant bugs that don't really exist.
One of the reasons that I wrote the Decompiler.NET product is that I
wasn't able to rely on the code generation quality of the available
tools on the market, regardless of their price. Unfortunately, novice
developer's don't often realize how valuable their time is to
themselves or their employers, and choose to expend significantly more
of their employers resources than the cost of purchasing a supported
product that resolves issues quickly when they are reported. As I've
indicated before, I have reported several bugs to Lutz regarding
Reflector 4.0 as early as the first day that it was released over two
months ago and he still has not made the time to correct them in his
product. I can enumerate them again for you and for him, if he is not
aware of them still existing in his current version. His frequent
releases show that he is spending some time improving the product, but
these releases don't correct his outstanding bugs, so the level of
support is still lacking. On the other hand, we respond immediately to
any customer issues, and find and fix most bugs ourselves before
customers even encounter them.

Using free unsupported tools that are buggy is not much different from
choosing to use an old slow computer with an old OS and insufficient
memory that crashes often, rather than spending a small amount of
money to upgrade. There are probably many professional users being
paid high salaries that are still relying on using the no longer
supported Windows 95 / 98 OS on slow hardware with frequent crashes
that don't realize the true cost of their lack of productivity would
be sufficiently outweighed by purchasing new hardware.

I understand the choice to use open source software like linux
sometimes if it works really well and there is no residual additional
cost to using it, but not in the case when the software that you have
chosen has known issues that directly affect you, are not resolved by
the vendor in a timely manner, and much better alternatives exist and
are available at justifiable prices. They are probably some people out
there who never discard anything that still works to some degree, and
are therefore still using rotary dial phones and watching B&W
televisions.

Unless you are really poor, and you are not using a decompiler for
your professional needs, it is much more cost effective to purchase a
low priced supported product than to continue to waste your time and
your employers time relying on substandard tools and resources that
turn out to not really be free because of the amount of extra time you
waste using them.

Jonathan

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Obfuscator and Decompiler
    ... Reflector is not using ILReader anymore. ... >> justify spending more time supporting it and correcting problems with ... >> wastes more time tracking down dependant bugs that don't really exist. ... >> of their employers resources than the cost of purchasing a supported ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.security)
  • Re: Obfuscator and Decompiler
    ... Reflector is not open source. ... > justify spending more time supporting it and correcting problems with ... > wastes more time tracking down dependant bugs that don't really exist. ... > of their employers resources than the cost of purchasing a supported ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.security)
  • Re: Obfuscator and Decompiler
    ... Reflector is not a good tool, only that Decompiler.NET does a much ... I try to send bug reports to Lutz ... and other competitors when I see them so that they can improve their ... I am glad to see that Lutz is addressing the bugs on his ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.security)
  • Re: Ngen.exe
    ... implementations for all of your development needs. ... I even go the extra step of reporting bugs and incorrect ... correct the code generated by Reflector 4.0.5 for the ILReader library ... I would not expect Reflector 4.0 to be able to ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.security)
  • Re: VB6 to C++ converter
    ... Lutz has written an excellent free product with Reflector and I have ... used it often in comparing code generation. ... written by Lutz in the current implementation of Decompiler.NET and I ...
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