[Resike]

Originally Posted by pelf IANAL. My brief research into the DMCA's reverse engineering exemption says that reverse engineering is okay to achieve "interoperability". "Interoperability" is defined as "the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged". In this case, as nothing is trying to inter-operate with Peggle, it doesn't look like it's covered. So, to sum up: the obfuscation in Peggle probably qualifies as "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" meaning that, unless it's for "interoperability", reverse engineering the obfuscation is not protected under the DMCA. It is almost certainly denotatively illegal to remove the obfuscation from the Peggle source code. (...for any purpose other than to achieve "interoperability" with it.) Personally, it would probably be the last addon on my list of addons to look for good code in. Given the fact that there is almost certainly an un-obfuscated addon that has frame code that does what you were looking for properly, getting down to Peggle on the list of addons to check would almost certainly never happen.* ------------- * That said, if somehow Peggle was my last bastion of hope in a miraculously disastrous sequence of attempts to learn what I needed to learn by other means... They can't be calling any API other than the API we are all using. At the point of last resort, if reading their code improves my understanding of how to call the API, what to provide to it and in what order it should be called, I don't consider such learning to be profiting from another party's novel implementation. There is likely a discrete set of "correct" ways to configure frames' properties and behaviors. To me, seeing a "correct" way of doing something in Peggle's code and using the information to make one's own code more correct does not diminish their copyright.

I think you summed up pretty good. However you can't deny Peggle could hold a lot of usable code for any developer who is intrested making similar game addons as Peggle.

While PopCap stated that they only obfuscated their code to keep the memory usage at the bottom, is a big fat lie. I also don't think they did it so other's can't use their code. Because whoever want to use their code the obfuscatiton won't stop them.

I think they only did this to generate a hype about the addon after it's release, and i think they have suceeded. Because it's been 4 years and it's still on the table.

Personally i don't think i hurt anyone with reviewing the code, also changing lines like this:

local f=CreateFrame("Frame", "", n);

To this:

local frame = CreateFrame("Frame", nil, parent)

Even scratch any level of reverse engineering.

But anyone would like check the original code i used to write mine, and compare it to my final versions feel free to ask, i'll gladly provide it.

Also i could have keep the info i gained to myself (Who would have noticed if it's from Peggle or not?), but instead i decided to share it with the community, for future learning/usage.