
they give the source away, they will no longer control this mysterious pearl of
great price.
First, software is no magic formula. Anyone with a reasonably logical
mind can write the stuff. You can be clever or trite, but all software boils down
to a series of calculated statements that cause the hardware to perform certain
well-defined operations. A programmer who has never seen the source code
can disassemble even the best program. Disassembly is a slow, tedious process,
but it can be done.
What about the question of control? A commonly held belief in the
computer world is that whoever controls the source code “owns” the pro
-
gram. This is partly true. ...