Comments on: Efim Bushmanov: “Good products can’t stay proprietary for long”

By: Tanmay

Tanmay — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:42:29 +0000

“Now I do research on my own projects. ”

I like this guy.

By: Stas Khirman

Stas Khirman — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:10:39 +0000

Hm, just downloaded Efim’s code and wanna give my 2cents to world wide broahaha….

Disclaimer: I didn’t compiled, build or tested Efim’s solution ( not that i worry about DMCIA, just had no time and probably have none anytime soon). I just read some pieces of code and review project structure

* Code is written by someone who never had been professionally ( paid) developing C applications. Projects structures look like made by junior student. Projects build with Visual Studio 6 – so outdated that no one i know even have a working copy ( released in 1998 )
Not sure, but it even seems to be INTENTIONALLY made look like a “non-professional” work. I bet a good conspiracy theory can be build around…

* Main ( or major) challenge of code de-obfuscation is resolved by someone else (“Sean O’Neil”).

* Efim’s published archive in such hurry that he included all temporary files, like debug database, object files and so on…

* So far i hear no one confirmed that this code is working and no one build an open source XMPP or similar connector for Skype ( usually open source community respond in days)..

So frankly, without testing functionality myself, i rather take those announcement with grain of skepticism.

(yes, I know, good persona would rather test code before writing such note, but i’m not a “good” person, i rather have a good arguments instead of actual work

regards
Stas

By: Foma

Foma — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:47:57 +0000

The electric age was launched and maintained by amateurs tinkering
with common ideas and technology that was shared quite openly. Even
after the patent lawyers started getting in on the act, independent
replication of technology was the leading channel for legitimate
competition and the spur to proprietors to take their inventions to
the next level. In this way countless unique communication
technologies have gone from being narrow applications to global
platforms – this is how the telegraph became the telephone, how BBS
tech became the Internet and how electronic indexes became search
engines. Bushmanov is nothing more than a gentleman scientist of our
age curious about the ‘secret’ proprietary infrastructure of tools we
use everyday – a protocol social scientist or e-culturologist. It is
not illegal in any context to figure out how things work, despite the
fact it worries those who would rather have us use their products and
services and not ask questions. More than just advancing technology
through stimulating competition, the presence of open source codes is
perhaps the cornerstone of postmodern independence from huge
corporations that walk the line between having great products and
controlling the way we communicate.