Why is it so difficult to copy source code that is not “open source”?

Question

It’s been in my mind if we are using the software/program or even hardware of a tech company, we can play around, install-unsinstall and more. Then how is it so difficult for someone to “unhide” the source code that the device uses? Technically the code is in the device somewhere hidden in it, so it’s there, but still, it’s almost impossible to obtain the source code. How do they achieve this so no one copies their code?

In: 366

Answer 1

The source is all written out nice and easy for a human to read, then the computer compiles it into something useful for computers, the executable.

You can copy the executable all day, no problem and it should run fine unless some extra protections were put on it, like some encryption based on a processor id, a dongle, or something of that nature.

You can’t see the source unless you de-compile it, like have the computer run the compile process backwards. That will work kind of, but you won’t have all the notes and pretty structure it originally had. You see this when anti-virus researchers decompile a virus to see what makes it tick. You can find out a lot, but it is harder.

Most open source things, people just copy, install, run the binary executable. That’s fine. But with most open source licenses, to give it to someone else, you have to include the source code along with the binary so anyone can go in, read it, change it, and recompile it to their own needs. It is the license, the permission to use it, that makes this easy.

Commercial software for a long time has like encrypted the source code in the binary, purposely obfuscating it to make it harder to copy or de-compile, since they see their value as in that source code. You see this in the warez and game cracking world, it becomes a cat and mouse game. The software company does what they can to make it hard to use unless they pay them, and people do what they can to get around that. Since people are always trying to crack, the methods become increasingly complicated, along with the cracking methods, so it becomes its own little sub-culture.