4 ms·

I've always wondered this - there's a real "pay for your useful tools" philosophy on here at least, for things like Sublime Text. Often quoted is the cost per h

I've always wondered this - there's a real "pay for your useful tools" philosophy on here at least, for things like Sublime Text. Often quoted is the cost per hour of use, etc. which justify the price (which is admittedly low compared to Ida). Does the same not apply to Ida where you would make the money back fast enough to justify the pricetag? Or is it that there are more hobbyists and less people making actual money from using Ida?

pm90 8y ago
This is basically how a monopoly works. And the defense industry behaves like a monopoly even if its made up of a bunch of different companies.
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  I disagree, I think there's an important difference between a monopoly and a company that happens to have no competition at the moment. I think that active anti-competitive actions are one of the defining characteristics of a monopoly, and so far we haven't seen that behavior from hex-rays. They had a significant barrier to entry protecting them, in that making a decompiler (the hex rays decompiler is the expensive part of "Ida") is hard, and the market is (was?) small. Consider the difference between Standard Oil and Adobe. Photoshop was the only game in town not because Adobe lost money on it to drive out rivals but because it's hard to make software that does what Photoshop does.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Both Photoshop and IDA Pro treat their customers pretty poorly, but they work well so everyone uses it. Hence why people are excited to see competitors in the space.
  - zokier 8y ago
    > I think there's an important difference between a monopoly and a company that happens to have no competition at the moment. I think that active anti-competitive actions are one of the defining characteristics of a monopoly You are of course free to think so, but be aware that does not align with the common use of the term monopoly.
Godel_unicode 8y ago
Lots of people make serious money with Ida, it's a license to print money similar to knowing Cisco was a few years ago (although even more so I'm hoping). The problem is barrier to entry. Many RE blogs and free resources start with "open up Ida", which means that in order to learn how to use the tool to make that money, you first have to buy the tool. Yes, there's the community edition, but it always seems to be missing that one feature you really need... I'm really curious what the prevalence of tools like this is going to do to the salaries for reverse engineers.

pm90 8y ago

This is basically how a monopoly works. And the defense industry behaves like a monopoly even if its made up of a bunch of different companies.

Godel_unicode 8y ago
I disagree, I think there's an important difference between a monopoly and a company that happens to have no competition at the moment. I think that active anti-competitive actions are one of the defining characteristics of a monopoly, and so far we haven't seen that behavior from hex-rays. They had a significant barrier to entry protecting them, in that making a decompiler (the hex rays decompiler is the expensive part of "Ida") is hard, and the market is (was?) small. Consider the difference between Standard Oil and Adobe. Photoshop was the only game in town not because Adobe lost money on it to drive out rivals but because it's hard to make software that does what Photoshop does.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Both Photoshop and IDA Pro treat their customers pretty poorly, but they work well so everyone uses it. Hence why people are excited to see competitors in the space.
- zokier 8y ago
  > I think there's an important difference between a monopoly and a company that happens to have no competition at the moment. I think that active anti-competitive actions are one of the defining characteristics of a monopoly You are of course free to think so, but be aware that does not align with the common use of the term monopoly.

Godel_unicode 8y ago

Lots of people make serious money with Ida, it's a license to print money similar to knowing Cisco was a few years ago (although even more so I'm hoping). The problem is barrier to entry. Many RE blogs and free resources start with "open up Ida", which means that in order to learn how to use the tool to make that money, you first have to buy the tool. Yes, there's the community edition, but it always seems to be missing that one feature you really need... I'm really curious what the prevalence of tools like this is going to do to the salaries for reverse engineers.