Robert Stanton

Recently, there has been much debate over open source software. But what most developers overlook is that even though they don't release their source, it may still be available. In the general scheme of things, there is always someone out there who will, by some means, be able to regenerate your code if they so desire. Whether it is by analyzing how your application works and replicating its behavior, or by reverse engineering with a tool, it will always be possible for someone to produce the same output with an appropriate amount of time in which to do it. With .NET, assemblies compile to an Intermediate Language (IL), which allows them to be executed on any system supporting Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR). There are many benefits to this solution that are outside the scope of this article, but a major drawback is the extent to which your code is compil... (more)