Decompiling software changes its language to make it more understandable to humans. It can be used for legitimate purposes such as finding bugs or adding functionality, but creating pirated copies is illegal and punishable by law.
Decompiling software means taking that software and changing the language it’s written in to something that is more understandable to humans. It does this by taking the original program language and changing it into a source code that can be better understood. If done correctly, when a person tries to decompile software, he can create a program that acts very similar, if not exactly the same, as the original software.
There are many programs that can be used to decompile software. Some of these programs have legitimate uses and some don’t. It should be noted that anyone attempting to decompile the software for illegal purposes may be infringing on intellectual property theft, which is punishable by law in many countries.
In fact, creating pirated copies of software or creating a product that has the same function as the original software may be the most common reason for decompiling software. This is because it may be possible to use a software decompiler to remove its copy protection from software. Therefore, anyone who can successfully decompile the software in this way has unlimited ability to make copies of the program.
While many companies would like to see computer programs that decompile software outlawed for this reason alone, there are some legitimate uses for software decompilation as well. These include finding bugs in the program, scanning for malware, and checking the code. Also, using a program to decompile software can serve as a learning aid for students studying programming. These instances can be very valid reasons to decompile the software.
Often times, a decompiler can be a useful tool for those dealing with open source software, who may want to add functionality or value to a particular program. In this case, a decompiler can help substantially in the progress towards rewriting or adding to the program. However, this is very different from decompiling a program from a major software manufacturer, most of which is protected by license agreements and anti-copying code.
It should be noted that software decompilation doesn’t just mean disassembling a program, although the name may suggest that that’s the only thing to do. The translation part of the decompilation is also very important. Often, once translated, it is then pieced back together to see if the desired results have been achieved. If not, additional work may need to be done.
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