SigmaStudio obfuscation generates invalid Mono IL

Hello,

It has been obfuscated to protect our code.

GLeclerc said:
This is just an incentive for dedicated people like me to completely reverse engineer the product and protocol with the board to publish an open-source and well documented version. If it was working well in the first place I would just use the provided software and tell students to use it as it is.

This must be a serious violation of our copyright.

Regards,

Harish

Protect against what ? Assuming your code was fully open source (which is more extreme than having the IL not obfuscated), what is the risk for company ? Someone modifying it ? There are two outcomes:

The modified version is worse so no one else than the person modifying it uses it, no impact to the company.

The modified version is better. People start using it. You don't sell Sigma Studio so there are no loss. The new version might make product developers happier with their evaluation boards because of the added capabilities in software so more and better products go to production and Analog sells more chips. Analog wins.

About the copyright, I strongly suspect you are wrong and there are countless examples (Open source versions of Microsoft words that can read and write Office documents, Open source version of Photoshop that can read and write Photoshop files etc...). Source:

According to Section 103(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 1201 (f)), a person in legal possession of a program may reverse-engineer and circumvent its protection if that is necessary to achieve "interoperability," a term that broadly covers other devices and programs that can interact with it, make use of it, and to use and transfer data to and from it in useful ways

I personally think that offering a Linux version would simply benefit everyone and also get you more clients... (it could still be obfuscated even though I think it serves no practical purposes in my opinion other than annoying everyone since it doesn't protect against skilled people. If you don't trust my word here is the list of open source de-obfuscators for .NET: github.com/.../.NET-Deobfuscator)

Hello,

Thanks for this interesting discussion. Since AD has invested much time and money into developing SigmaStudio, they do have the right to keep it close to the vest. I'm just happy that it (usually) works and that AD makes it available without charge, as you said they desire to sell chips not software. Not being into IT, I don't understand the obfuscation issue. It does seem weird that developers obfuscate their software to "protect" it -- what happens should Microsoft decide to clean up the bugs? It's also interesting that the folks behind the open-source .NET chose to produce an idealized version rather than making it true to the de-facto Microsoft standard, bugs and all.

Another issue is that increasingly, Windows computers (such as some Surface models) have been switching from X86 to ARM. It's my understanding that we need new USBi drivers to make SigmaStudio fully functional on such machines.

Best regards,

Bob

Hi Guys, Code obfuscation used by "Analog Devices" is useless, most smart guys can extract full sources of Sigma Studio, this also includes all DLLs.

But real question is, "Analog Devices" is not interested to solve current BUGs, some of him causes a lot of headache for many people, and this instigate people like "GLeclerc" and others, to try to disaseemble code to solve it himself.

I can count at least 50 existing BUGs/Problems in current version of Sigma Studio, also "Analog Devices" source codes looks not professional, development team have too much junk on their code, some is unbeleaveble "Looks like code from more 30 years old" being reused as work around.

I need to say, every time a bug is reported, they always say "we have a lot of work" so it will be for later or never, I believe it may be a lack of ability to solve problems.

I believe it will end as follows, a group will reverse the code and create an IDE with similar functionalitys as Sigma Studio, but with open source code, because it seems that this is exactly what "Analog Devices" wants.

About running USBi on ARM, i beleave that Sigma Studio must be multiplataform, that can run on Linux too, even if ARM.

KJBob, USBi (ADIUSBI.DLL) are too simple, can be translated to any OS easely, i dont have an ARM device that can run windows , and this makes dificult to "translate/cross compile" and also test it.

Doesn't believe Sigma Studio code can be rolled back, is wrong.

I sincerely apologize, because my intention is not to offend anyone, just expose the real problem to "Analog Devices" and with this attract the attention of those who have the power to take action, that is solve Sigma Studio problems..

Hello Guys,

Keep in mind that there is a EULA in force which you are advised to read.

I see and know about the bug issues and you certainly have had my attention for a while now. I am working hard to get solutions implemented. There is a new revision due out soon that will take care of some bugs but not all known bugs.

Dave T