zlacker

>>knacke+(OP)
Makes me wonder if decompilation could eventually become so trivial that everything would become de-facto open source.

>>rlili+xjo
It would be "source available", if anything, not "open source".

> An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified or shared (with or without modification) under defined terms and conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

Companies have been really abusing what open source means- claiming something is "open source" cause they share the code and then having a license that says you can't use any part of it in any way.

Similarly if you ever use that software or depending on where you downloaded it from, you might have agreed not to decompile or read the source code. Using that code is a gamble.

>>jasonj+Iwo
But clean room reverse engineered code can have its own license, no?

>>sa1+dxo
Yeah, I think it can. I'm reminded of the thing in the 80s when Compaq reverse engineered and reimplemented the IBM BIOS by having one team decompile it and write a spec which they handed to a separate team who built a new implementation based on the spec.

I expect that for games the more important piece will be the art assets - like how the Quake game engine was open source but you still needed to buy a copy of the game in order to use the textures.