this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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I mean can't someone steal code from the devices file manager? or create his own fork?(Sorry for bad English)

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Closed source is generally compiled code in an executable, so you'd have to do a lot of work de-compiling it back to the source code first.

Even at the OS level, lots of the stuff "under the hood" in Windows is obfuscated, and still the same issue, most of it is compiled code, you'd have to de-compile a significant portion of it (in an OS there's also an amount that doesn't have to be de-compiled) to be able to actually look at the code itself.


Please don't apologize for bad English, it's not against the law to have English as a second language. As a US citizen, one of the most frustrating thing is knowing brilliantly competent and capable immigrants who are ignored and passed over because their education and credentials are simply in a different language. They often come as refugees and didn't have the opportunity to get a great English education, but literally come with multiple degrees from quality universities in their home countries. Treating them like they know less because they speak a different language is so fucking absurd. Also, your English is fine, don't beat yourself up.

I would sound worse in any language I tried to speak other than English, you're doing better than I would, and better than a lot of English speakers would when put in the same situation speaking a second language they're not familiar with.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thanks man I just sometimes make grammar mistakes and people ridicule my weird choice of words and my accent thats why I said sorry for bad English

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

Hey, I used to be a lot better writer, but then I got cancer and now my brain leaves out lots of words when I write or replaces words with similar words. These days I find myself constantly re-editing comments to make them make sense because the first run misses a lot. Nobody knows anyone else's story or why they might struggle with communication, and whether it's a second language or losing your faculties due to disease and age, it's not really something fair to ridicule others for. Cheers and keep up the good work, you look like you're doing fine to me.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Everything is open source if you can read assembly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Sadly not, it is often considered illegal to reverse-engineer software for the purpose of circumventing DRM.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

AHA, I FOUND WHAT THIS REFERS TO WITHOUT PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND HELP FROM SEARCH ENGINES

(ok, I lied, I used DDG as a shortcut for the wikipedia page on illegal numbers)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

It's only illegal if you don't abolish the state

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It means that you only have access to the compiled binaries of the program (the files on your system) and not to the source code.
Which means that you cannot see why and how the program functions the way it does. You can try and reverse engineer it or decompile it, but it will be different from the original code. As you stated, you can't fork it either because you don't have access to the original source control.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Idk why but this close source stuff feels shady thanks for answering my question

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

That's how most companies operate.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

In addition to the other listed reasons, going open source is an extra step.

The code has to be compiled to run on your system (if it's written in a non-interpreted language, which a huge portion of software is).

You can't just run the source code on your computer. And getting your customer's computer to compile the source code itself would require a massive amount of overhead.

So, to distribute your software, you're always almost always going to distribute an already compiled version, and you'd have to choose to give the customer the uncompiled version as just a separate thing on the side. And there's no real reason to do that for most companies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

It's interesting to have closed source for some use cases, (sensitive or top secrets programs for instance) but open source should definitely be the default rather than the exception in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

In addition to what others said about the availability of the source code itself, there's a whole legal framework around it.

A company could have code where the source is publicly available, but they still could say that you are not allowed to copy, fork, sell/distribute it. In that case, there wouldn't physically be anything preventing you from doing it, which sounds strange, until you think about how that's the exactly how it works for books, music, movies, etc.

There's also an in-between for software that's not publicly open source, but is open source to users. A company could sell you their software, and deliver it to you as open source code.