Dear Bill, I appreciate you comment very much, and it is exactly the thing I've been worried about all these years. Naturally encouragement for stealing is not the point in here... The basic dilemma as I see it, is that MapBasic hasn't really been developed for several years. Trey Patillo has done some major job to provide some alternatives, but it all seems to end up in compling the source code itself. The biggest problem rises, because I guess MBX file was in a first place ment to be decompilable! It is really surprising that the compilation process only looses the comments of the source code. As you know even the original variable names, line numbers etc. remain in MBX's. So once you give information for compiling you actually open the gate other way too. It's unavoidable drawback from this nearly looseless compiling. I see the future of MB as a useful tool for creating UI, but I guess there is still much more left. Have to reconsider the pros and cons. Take care, Anssi ==================================================== Speaking as a MapBasic developer who has a considerable investment in MapBasic applications and has clients who have invested even more to pay me to build applications for them, I see no real advantage to releasing information to the public about how to decompile an MBX. If you have lost your source, and can prove the MBX is yours, Joe Bolian of Stopwatch Maps has offered to decompile it for you for free. Outside of recovering lost source code I see no good reason to empower any yahoo with a tool to open up my code like a can of beans. It's not *that* easy to create a decompiler, and I wouldn't want to see anyone who can't do it just given the information to make it easy to steal my code and compromise my clients' investments. By giving away the secrets you soften up the environment for anyone to build a serious project based on MapBasic and will only bring about its end that much quicker.
I think that MapBasic has at least a couple more years of useful commercial life to it, and it is very likely that old MBX applications will still run in the .NET environment for years beyond that. Of course, if your goal is to destroy MapBasic as a tool to build commercial applications, and force us all to move to more advanced languages and techniques, then go for it. I would abandon MapBasic pretty fast as a development tool if a decompiler was made available to the public. And for those who can't move on to more complicated and expensive software development solutions, you would simply be exposing them to all sorts of abuse from theft of their ideas up to and including loading a virus into thier MBXs. What possible good would it do to make sorcerer's apprentices of anyone whose heart has not been purifeid by the long quest to learn the lore for themselves? ;-) - Bill Thoen _______________________________________________ MapInfo-L mailing list [email protected] http://www.directionsmag.com/mailman/listinfo/mapinfo-l
