REverse engineering question - looking under the hood

[Londoner]

Hi,
I have somefree andcheap bits of software I would like to 'tweek' how easy is it to reverse engineer or get at the code beneath a piece of software or utility?

It's probably a daft question but if anyone has any suggestions or advice or links I would be glad to receive them.

Thanks for reading.

[pam123]

Just check the license first.
If it's GPL code, or one of the OSS versions, where ever you got it from with have the source code available for free download.

[glc]

To elaborate on this - read the license terms carefully - you may find something in there specifically prohibiting reverse engineering and/or similar activities. If not, go for it, if so, we can't help as per forum rule 9. If it's open source or GPL, have fun!

[rspassey]

Out of curiosity, what program(s) are you thinking of "tweaking"? Perhaps we could help find more specific information as to whether the source code is available online and their policy towards allowing users to edit the code.

[Londoner]

Originally Posted by rspassey Out of curiosity, what program(s) are you thinking of "tweaking"? Perhaps we could help find more specific information as to whether the source code is available online and their policy towards allowing users to edit the code.

Thanks for all the posts - I wasn't actually thinking of a specific program. I really am just fishing. I wondered if maybe there was a proceedure which I coul;d look into and familiarise myself with.

I found when I was learning html and flash and website technologies that all the tutorials in the world didn't get me anywhere as far as looking at the source code of a working site - and I was just thinking that the same principle might apply here.

- I guess the program that got me thinking was one I recently got called 'search automator pro' which is basically an interface through which you access the features of a number of search engines. Of course, the real power is in the actual search engines themselves but this is a really handy program because it kinda tidies it all up into one interface. I was interested to see how that worked because I'm also interrested in how search engines work but figure that's a whole other bigger subject and maybe this was a way of dipping my foot in the water.

But then I thought of a few other programs like some ebay utilities which, again, access ebay's data but present it differently or focussed on one aspect.

Thanks for reading, guys.