Aug 87 Letters
Volume Number: 3
Issue Number: 8
Column Tag: Letters
The Great French Cracker Scandal
Special to MacTutor
J. Langowski
[The following is the Editor’s summary of a Bix post by Jörg Langowski, in the
Editor’s own words.]
The French developer community is up in arms over the arrest and trial of one of
their own, for hacking and cracking several copy protected programs distributed in
France. Two years ago, a French hacker by the name of Nourallah Goulamhoussen, who
operated under the pseudonym of Faraglace (maybe it means something in French!),
pulled a “Simon Jester” move by cracking a pre-release of Silver Surfer, alias 4th
Dimension, and Excel. He also played around with the start-up screens and logos,
leaving cute messages behind. Unfortunately, he got carried away and left his real name
in there as well. ACI, the French makers of 4th Dimension, lead by their president,
Marylene Delbourg-Delphis, known as Madame DD, brought suit, joined by Microsoft
Corp. and Apple Computer. The three heavy weights claimed damages of $390,000 for
“copying the brand name and damaging the brand image.” Yesterday the verdict came
in: Nourallah was fined $3,300 for the criminal offense and ordered to pay $83,000
in damages to the three “injured” parties. Since Nourallah is a student in Pharmacy,
it is not clear how the three corporations plan to collect from him. Since 4th
Dimension is now being distributed in this country unprotected, and Excel has been
unprotected and cracked for years, the whole thing sounds like a tale from Alice in
Wonderland. Unless you happen to be a Pharmacy student by the name of Nourallah
Goulamhoussen.
Look What I Found!
The problem for Nourallah seems to be that he did this hacking and cracking a
long time ago, back when we all knew very little about the Mac and it’s operation. What
did him in, is that his cracked copies of 4th Dimension and Excel were picked up by
three legitimate crooks, who collected pirated software, published a catalog of them and
sold them for profit. Nourallah had no idea they were using copies he had cracked. The
pirate catalog included MacWrite, MacPaint, and a lot of other protected software
besides the two that carried Nourallah’s handywork in them. ACI and Microsoft went
after Nourallah because “he made it possible for the other three to copy the
programs”; in other words, as an example to other would be software crackers who
break protected programs. Gee, if they tried to go after people like that here, they’d
have to arrest half the country! (How many times have you used Copy II Mac or Hard
Disk Utility lately?)
Everyone seems to agree the three bad guys deserved to be prosecuted, but what
the French Macintosh community can’t understand is why they went after Nourallah?
He had nothing to do with the three software pirates and certainly never profited from
any of their activities.
French Software Madam
This “Madame DD” of ACI is apparently quite a character in this whole charade.
At the trial, she summed up her feelings by saying “from my point of view, those
people are nothing but flunked-out developers, evil individuals, any turkey who
spends enough of his time will eventually deprotect a product!”
Her opinion of the need for backup copies was expressed in another remark: “Oh,
sure, some would like a backup of the key disk just in case Only the probability that
the user destroys his key disk is almost zero and, in 9 out of 10 times, such demands
come from dishonest people who want two disks for the price of one.”
The Madam also has a few words to say about a software company’s responsibility
to replace defective media: “Nothing forces us to replace a program. If you crash your
car or your Mac, the manufacturer won’t replace it, even if they are absolutely
necessary for your work. You spill coffee on a book, you’re not going to ask the
publisher to send you a new one, but you do it if it’s been a program. Why should
software be treated separately?”
Get the idea that Madame DD is a bit behind the times? Rumor has it that ACI
developed a list of people who had the ability to crack software protection in France so
they could send them threatening letters. The fact that Apple and Microsoft were party
to the “de-frocking” of Nourallah, who certainly did not have the means to adequately
defend himself against such mammoth corporate power, has to send a chill down the
back of every freedom loving programmer. Will some teenage software hacking come
back to haunt you some day to the tune of $100,000? Simon Jester, you ever get back
all the copies of your bootleg SJ disk #1?
What’s All the Fuss?
The final irony of this is the fact that the French version of 4th Dimension is a
heavily protected piece of buggy software that crashes regularly. Nourallah’s copy was
a very early pre-release version of this thing. Apple, and now ACIUS, has spent a year
working to get the thing debugged here in the US and the product is so close to final
release (shipping began the day this issue went to the printers) that one has to wonder
“what’s all the fuss about?” There is talk in France of taking up a collection to help
Nourallah pay his $83,000 debt, and hire a decent lawyer for an appeal. Certainly,
Microsoft has to look pretty ridiculous in this thing, since Excel is not even copy
protected over here. The idea that this poor student is going to make Bill Gates a little
bit richer than his six billion dollars makes him now is a little unnerving. Bill, why
don’t you make a charitable contribution, and forgive this guy his debt?
French Reaction
The French reaction was summed up on the CalvaCom bulletin board by
Jean-Benedict de Saussure, who said, “That Apple helps to pursue those crooks who
sell illegal copies, or those who use software which they didn’t buy, makes full sense.
But that the consequence of this would be to crack down on a guy whose main fault is to
have been intelligent enough to arrive at a level which others had never reached, that
is hard to swallow.”
And finally, this remark from our Editorial Board member, Jörg Langowski:
“Microsoft, Apple and ACI seem to have chosen to constitute an example of an individual
who didn’t have the resources to defend himself. He played around with some software,
trying to understand how it worked. His ‘handywork’ got in the hands of others, who
without his knowing, made money from it. He was not tried for stealing software, but
for making it possible for others to steal it. We are paying a ‘shareware lawyer’ and
collecting for an appeal meanwhile, quite a few of us have decided to give up using the
software of certain companies, e specially since there are often cheaper, unprotected
programs that do a better job.”
Have an opinion? Send it to:
Jörg Langowski
EMBL, c/o I.L.L. 156x
F-38042 Grenoble Cedex
France
Update on Lightspeed C & Pascal
Special to MacTutor
Andrew Singer
Think Technologies
[The following is the Editor’s summary of a phone conversation with Mr. Singer.]
Let me take this opportunity to bring all of our MacTutor fans up to date on
Lightspeed C and Pascal relative to the Macintosh II. We have been working very hard
to get both products up to speed with both the new Macs and the new operating system.
Surprise! Everything you knew is now wrong, again!
What many people may not realize is that Apple really pulled a fast one on the
developers when they released system 4.1. This system was completely different from
the beta version system 4.0 that we were working with on the early beta Macintosh II
machines, seeded to developers so they could port their software over. And what made
matters worse, the production Mac II units turned out to be very much different from
the pre-production seed models, and nothing at all like Inside Macintosh Volume 5
described. (I’m sure David Wilson can sympathize with this as he attempts to prepare
his Mac II programming seminar!)
Last Minute Changes by Apple
We found that things that worked fine on the seed machines under system 4.0,
now crashed on the production units under 4.1, e specially in the area of the menu
manager. Another problem has been the late shipping of a final version of the traps and
equates files. As a result, we found ourselves calling Apple and saying, “Did you know
the new system does such and such?”, to which they would reply, “Oh, really? Let me
get back to you on that” so obviously, even the people inside Apple were having
trouble finding out just what changes had been made to the operating system in the new
version.
Hurry up and wait
Apple figured those developers who had seed machines didn’t need the production
machines as quickly as those without, so we got moved down the pecking order. We
finally just went out to a local dealer and bought one off the shelf to speed up the
conversion process. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the production machine
hadn’t been so much different from the seed machine.
It didn’t help matters much either when Apple released system 4.1 to the public
without any warning to developers as to the impact they could expect from the new
system. At the same time we found things breaking under 4.1, we started getting calls
from our customers that their software wasn’t working. It would have been nice if
Apple had given the developer community some time to adjust to version 4.1 before
making it public. It would have been even nicer if Apple had released documentation
alerting us to the impact of changes under 4.1. But even Apple itself does not seem to
have fully documented anywhere, the system changes we are uncovering in our
development work.
Lightspeed C
The current version of Lightspeed C, 2.01, runs under system 4.1 on the Mac II
but has some problems with the glue routines for the new system features. We have
received the beta glue routines from Apple, the same as those being shipped with MPW
and we are preparing interfaces to them for LS C. A new beta version of LS C with the
new library interfaces will ship within a week. This upgrade utility will make LS C
100% Mac II compatible. The upgrade will be posted on Compu-Serve (it was posted
the day this issue went to press) and will be available through our dealers, including
MacTutor. Incidentally, these new routines have very little resemblance with Inside
Mac Volume 5, so beware. Apple really needs to upgrade Volume 5 so that it reflects
reality!
No Switcher With 4.1
One thing that is not supported by the new system is switcher. Apple has made
extensive changes to the system dependent portions of the Mac so that switcher no
longer works. Unfortunately we can’t do anything about that. Apple has made the
decision to abandon switcher for now until their own future Finder upgrades are ready.
This was probably to be expected.
We are also working on a major new release of LS C, beyond this Macintosh II
correction, which will add significant new features. We don’t think that will be ready
for the Boston MacWorld Expo, but are hoping to release it as soon as it is ready.
Meanwhile, we will have a major new software tool for developer’s to show at Boston.
Lightspeed Editor’s to be Released
We are announcing the release of a new product calld capps’, which makes the
Editor technology of the Lightspeed C and Pascal products available to developer’s both
as a stand-alone library and as commented source code. capps´ is based on a software
library called “PE” (Program Edit) that we created because the Macintosh Toolbox’s
TE (Text Edit) package didn’t provide the performance or the functionality that we
wanted for the integrated editors in THINK’s LightspeedC and Lightspeed Pascal. capps’
will also include a library called “grep” (who knows what the acronym means) that
implements the fancy pattern-based search and replace features in LightspeedC. As
you can well imagine, both libraries have been carefully crafted to deliver exceptional
performance. Our languages depend on them!!
capps´ consists of the same PE and grep libraries actually used in THINK’s
Lightspeed language products, complete documentation for those libraries, and two
complete, ready-to-use standalone editors implemented using them. The first, PEdit,
is a fully featured program editing application similar to the editor in LightspeedC.
The second, “Apple Edit”, is a handy desk accessory style program editor.
Machine-readable source code, extensively commented, is supplied for both editors.
Versions will be available for both LightspeedC and Lightspeed Pascal users. The price
has not been fixed yet but it will certainly be under $100.
LS Pascal
Lightspeed Pascal, version 1.0, does not work under the new system. However,
we have been shipping a beta version 1.01 to all our customers who call and ask for it.
This version runs on the Mac II if you use it as a traditional compiler; build the
application first, then run and debug it externally from the LS shell. If you try to run
your application under the LS debugger shell, our context switching from your
application to the Lightspeed application causes the Mac II problems because we are not
resetting all of the new system dependent globals that are context sensitive. The
problem is, Apple won’t (or may not know themselves!) tell us all the system
parameters that are context sensitive, and so we have had to dig them out by hand.
Context Switch is OS Dependent
Lightspeed Pascal works by doing something similar, but more sophisticated,
than switcher. This is how your application can run while under control of the LS
shell, giving it the wonderful source level debugging we’ve all come to know and love.
But this developer friendliness comes with a price. Take for example the problem of
the menu bar. For a context switch, you need to display one menu bar for the
application, then revert back to the compiler’s menu bar. Normally you would do a
GetMenuBar followed by a ClearMenuBar, but if you do that, you won’t be able to get
your previous menu bar back correctly. The semantics of these operations have
changed, partly because of the color additions to the menu manager. Apple has not
documented these effects, and they really only apply to applications like ours that are
trying to manipulate and control the system environment. We’ve had to disassemble the
new ROMS to find out what the Mac is doing to us. If you are having problems in your
own software development, look to the menu manager as one possible source, as that
has been radically altered. Many of the changes are very subtle, and while Apple has
been very cooperative when we call, we’ve had to do all the research to find those
subtleties. A lot of reverse engineering has been done to make sure we have identified