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by cyphar
3650 days ago
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> I was fine with using a binary only version of Solaris, IRIX, and HP-UX; so long as I could get those gratis, That's not the point at all. You didn't have any software freedom -- how did you modify your software? It's great that you could distribute it in your country, but you didn't have the means to practically modify software. Also, gratis isn't the point. I don't care if I have to pay for GNU/Linux or any other software, I just care about whether or not I get software freedom as a result. > not everybody grew up in the United States which has fascist copyright laws I didn't grow up in the US. > don't make the error of assuming that the entire world was mis-fortunate and lacked freedom in this sense. You lacked the practical freedom to modify software (okay, so you didn't have copyright but if you don't have the source then you can't pracically modify your software without spending far too much time reverse-engineering it). I hate to break it to you, but you did lack freedom. |
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In a program called a debugger, which back then was known as a monitor. You pressed a button, and the monitor was started from a cartridge, or you loaded a monitor, and then you loaded the machine code. And then you stepped through that disassembled code, and then you inserted a breakpoint in a strategic place. And when the program would stop execution, you'd consider the state of the program, and then you'd make the desired modifications, either by changing the existing processor instructions, or by adding your own code and hooking it in. Worked for an entire generation of crackers, I don't see what the big deal is.
So in that sense, there was no closed source, as nobody can really hide machine code, and believe you me, people have tried, and then some! But to a cracker, to a really good coder, every piece of code is open source, because there is nowhere to hide.
A much bigger deal was if you were not capable of this, because it meant you were a lamer and didn't make the cut.