[thelist] [OT] cfdecrypt, was: (Gift Culture)

Raymond Camden jedimaster at macromedia.com
Sun Aug 19 18:54:36 CDT 2001


> ignorance on my part to be honest(i didnt realize the admin stuff was
> closed). i've always loved many things about cold fusion, and think its
> a good product in many regards. keeping everything about cold fusion
> closed is a mistake IMO(naturally, disagreement is expected), that is
> only forcing developers - myself included - to consider open products
> for future development(J2EE, PHP to name the obvious few)

Well, I don't know how to respond to that. Just because the Admin is closed
it doesn't mean the product itself is flawed. (Of course, I'm pretty biased
towards CF.) If you choose to not use CF because you can't see the source,
like PHP or Perl, that's fine, but I think it's a bad reason to not use CF.

But again, that's kinda off topic. CF rules. Period. ;)

[deletia]
> i share your position on the right of the creator. i also believe in the
> rights of the individual. the second question is obviously hard to
> answer. I believe that after all other options have been exhausted to
> 'rightly' learn from something, i'm for reverse engineering. I am trying
> to learn from a piece of code and use it for myself. I am not saying its
> OK to decompile, recompile with changes, and sell it as competition.

I guess I don't see the difference. To me, it sounds like your saying, "I'm
going to break the law but it's ok becuase I'm not going to resell it."
Imagine that the CF Admin, instead of being a pretty simple app, was
actually very complex. Maybe you don't plan on reselling it, but if ALLR
felt like protecting that code, even if you want to learn from it, you don't
have an excuse.

Here is another point - if you feel strongly that the CF Admin should be
decrypted, why didn't you ask Macromedia? Of course, we know what they would
say, but still - why didn't you ask? If enough people ask, they may change
their mind.

> again, i respect your position and opinion ray, thanks for the
> conversation :)

Heh, that's what I'm here for. ;) I have to say, this thread came up a few
months back on cf-talk, the major CF listserv. When I responded there, in
pretty much the same way, there were one or two people who accused me of
being a company hack. I'm happy people here were able to take my opinions
for what they were.

Ray Camden





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