What's this in the begining of a Program!

[LL]

Hi to everyone,

I've been playing with GoAsm, Golink, and GoRc for a bit now.  Yesterday I decided to use the "MASM32 Editor" to see what I was assembling as a program.  I did an "Open binary as hex" to one of the small program I assembled with the above tools.  I notice something that I hadn't put in my program. Can someone tell me what I'm seeing.  Here is a  part of this hex dump that I got:

00000000 :M  Z  l  00 01 00 00 00 - 02 00 00 00  ÿ ÿ  00 00
00000010 :00 00 00 00 11 00 00 00 -  @ 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000020 :W  i  n   3  2 20  P  r -  o  g  r  a  m !  0D 0A
00000030 :24 B4 09 BA 00 01 CD 21 - B4 4C CD 21 60 00 00 00
00000040 :G  o  L  i  n  k  ,  20 - G  o  A  s  m  20 w  w
00000050 :w  .  G  o  D  e  v  T  - o  o  l  .  c  o  m  00

The last two lines are: GoLink, GoAsm www.GoDevTool.com.  Please help me understand how it got in the program.

Thank you again for the above tools,

LL

[AeroASM]

This is advertising put into unused parts of the EXE by GoLink.

shameless self-promotion!

[LL]

Thank you for your reply!

I now know what he means in his "licence and distribution" by the last phrase: "You are not entitled to hide or deny my copyright." If I understand this, he's "taging" every program made with his tools. Thank you again AeroASM for being straight with me.

LL

[P1]

He dropped into the winstub for the exe.  It should be easy enough to find and replace with standard one.

Regards,  P1  :8)

[LL]

Hi P1,

It's not that I can't or won't respect his copyright. It's more of a question of finding something that you don't expect. I think that he should simply tell, in a straightforward way, that he tags what is created with his programs. I'm new to programming, to the forum and more importantly, to the trust off others with their advice and programs. Finding his tag, in what you called "the winstub", made me ask: What else could be there that I don't know yet ? For me, it's a question of trust !

LL

[bushpilot]

Don't lose sleep over it, Jeremy is trustworthy.

Greg

[LL]

Hi bushpilot,

Thank you for your reply ! He's treated my questions with respect. He offers tools via this forum (which couldn't function without trust) and I'm sure that others would have added comments if he wasn't trustworty. However, I still prefer being straightforward.

Again, thanks.

LL

[MichaelW]

LL,

I would be interested to know why this matters to you. Before your post I was not aware of any of this, but had I noticed it in a dump I would not have been the least bit concerned, or even particularly interested. How could this possibly have any significant effect on anything that you do?

[LL]

MichaelW,

At this point in time, it no longer matters to me.  People react differently ! I was simply surprise and confused since I hadn't added this information.


LL

[jorgon]

I think it is right for development tools to identify themselves in the final exe.

There are two reasons:-

• Diagnostics. If a problem with the way the exe is put together is suspected, the starting point to diagnose the problem is the tool or tools which made it. GoLink also inserts its version number in the optional header to assist in dianostics.
• Security. There might be some programmers who would wish to remove the tool id for one reason or another.  One reason would be to try to reduce traceability.  However, this would have to be done deliberately and the result would usually be obvious.  In any case every development tool has certain characteristics and you would usually be able to tell which tool made a particular exe.

GoAsm also identifies itself and the version number in the object file which it makes.  GoLink makes use of this information (and the GoAsm version number) when linking.

None of this has anything to do with matters of copyright.  If you write source code to make an object file or an exe with the "Go" tools, the copyright is yours.

[PBrennick]

When I first discovered this, I was unsure how I felt about this.  My final thoughts on the matter is that I like this idea very much.  Different compilers work in different ways and it can be useful to know what tools were used to perform the build.

Someone mentioned that it would be easy enough to replace the stub with the standard stub.  This would be a breach of the 'rules of use' as set forth in his licensing agreement.  I would sugguest that you do not do that.  Besides, it is not offensive in any way like adware and such.

Paul