I don’t know (but wanna learn) programming, but, for example, can’t you inspect the code of an app if it’s installed?

(yeah this is kind of a stupid question.)

EDIT: Thanks for the clarification, guys!

  • Kissaki@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Executable code inspection is not reading source.

    If you read Javascript Code, it’s readable as Text. But even then, it may have been transformed from a readable source with speaking names and structure to an obfuscated mess that works the same, may be more performant, but is not human readable. It’s not the source, so it can’t reasonably be called open source.

    If it’s not transformed it is though.

    Different languages have different transformations. Most programs you install are compiled to transformed data. The text source is readable. The transformed result is not. Tooling may help inspecting or seeing parts, or trying to recreate the source, but it’s not the source.