Is it possible to get the source code for an application software like a time software,or any of those applicaton software?...lekkie

You rarely can obtain the source code of an application you run under Windows. Companies don't want people to use that source code to copy their application and steal their profit.

... BUT (I'll get bashed if I don't mention that ;P), there is a growing movement on the Internet called the Free Software movement. The homepage is at www.gnu.org. All the applications they distribute there come with source code that you may reuse at modify at will (as long as you don't make money with it). Most of the applications they distribute, however, run better on the Linux OS.

I'm pretty sure many people on this forum will be happy to complete what I wrote.

There are a few companies who released their older source code. Most are games (e.g. quake, doom, wolfenstein) but Watcom (a C++ compiler) was released some time ago after their users had been asking the company to release it after it was discontinued. Now it's further developed under GPL.

so there's no way to crack an application software to see the algorithm or codes, to modify it to my own taste or understand it.... is that what u r sayin?

Unless you wanna go through x megs of assembly or *shudder* byte-code.

Programs written in things like VisualBasic and C get compiled first to assembly, and from assembly to machine code. Assembly is just a convenient representation to machine code, so it's easy to translate machine code back to assembly. But, it's difficult (or impossible) to go backwards from assembly to higher level languages.

So, no. For more information, look up stuff on assembly programming.

- taubz

Don't all compilers do that? I didn't hink anyone could understand machine code nowaday(not even a hacking guru).

What particular sourcecode are you looking for(Oh and in programs that don't release their source, their contracts usually forbid deccompolation.

lekkie if you can read assembly then u might have some luck with it. And reverse engineering is a crime u know. instead of reverse engineering, why dont you work out what you want to change an do it yourself.
whizzzzzzzzzzzzz
not that its that simple

I believe reverse engineering is only illegal if you agreed to it in a contract on downloading/installing the software (the user agreement)

By the sounds of it the programs you are wanting to reverse engineer come with windows, other applications or as stand-alone products in which case you probably at some point clicked "Agree" saying you wouldn't decompile/reverse engineer any of the applications.

If you use Free Software, then you have the right to modify your software however you want and even sell your version. This is why I love Free Software--everyone has the freedom to do whatever they want as long as they play nice (i.e. you have to give the same freedoms that you have). See http://www.gnu.org like Neumann suggested. GNU now has a complete Free Software OS that will be released later this year or sometime next year (finally...gnumach 2.0 is all that is left IIRC). For now you can use GNU/Linux (The GNU OS using the Linux kernel instead of the GNU 'Kernel' the Hurd).

According to British Computer Law (which is where pretty much every other country copies its computer laws from) it is not a crime to reverse engineer the code, but it is a crime to copy/distribute that code (IP) unless it is in the contract that you shall not reverse engineer the code in which case you are in breach of contract.

In short, you can pretty much look at/read the source code legally but you can't copy any of it.