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0007 — Clean-room validation: specs + time_decode oracle; never decompile DCode

Status: Accepted

Context

Correctness must be provable against independent references, and the work must stay publishable — free of intellectual-property taint from proprietary tools.

Decision

Validate clean-room:

  • Primary specs are the source of truth — cite them ([MS-DTYP] for FILETIME, RFC 5905 for NTP, Apple TN1150 for HFS+, ECMA-335 for .NET, the GPS ICD, etc.).
  • time_decode (MIT, Corey Forman) is the open reference and differential oracle — its code may be read and used as a differential oracle; its REFERENCES.md is a citation starting point.
  • Differential battery: a fixed table of (value, format) → expected cross-checked against time_decode and each spec's worked example; every divergence reconciled (Doer-Checker).

Consequences

  • Never decompile DCode. The proprietary .NET binary's EULA near-certainly forbids reverse engineering and building a competing product; decompiling and reimplementing would taint a publishable work. The format facts are public (specs), so it is not needed. At most run it as a black-box sanity check — never copy from it.
  • Validation methodology is documented in ../validation.md.