Florian Gilcher
3/3/2009 3:22:00 PM
On Mar 3, 2009, at 2:51 PM, John Wells wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 5:09 AM, David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com>
> wrote:
>> Sharagoz -- wrote:
>>>
>>> My second concern is protecting source code.
>>> I realize that everything that can be compiled can also be
>>> decompiled,
>>>
>>
>> That is not entirely true. Or rather, it can be "decompiled", all
>> right, but
>> not into anything resembling the original source code.
>>
>>> but I would like it to take a little more effort for average Joe to
>>> view/edit source code than to simply right-click on somefile.rb and
>>> opening it in wordpad.
>>
>> The main question you need to ask yourself is, why don't you want
>> Joe to do
>> that?
>>
>> If your goal is to prevent others from taking your code,
>> repackaging it, and
>> selling it as their own, that's fine, although there are better
>> ways of
>> doing it -- like legal measures.
>
> You know, I see this argument repeated from time to time on the ruby
> mailing list and I have to disagree. Legal measures are a (expensive)
> way of defending your intellectual property, but preventing access is
> the easiest and by far the cheapest. Any time you have to do something
> with the word "legal" in it, it's costing you hourly money. For a
> small shop, this can often be debilitating.
>
> The only time legal measures would be pointed out as a better option
> than prevention...is when the option for prevention doesn't exist...
>
> John
>
My argument is usually a different one: is your code sufficiently
interesting and reusable enough to be stolen?
Usally, programs are stolen entirely, not in parts. No part of code
blurring can fix that.
There are solutions to this (code obfuscation, removing comments,
etc.) that make it harder for uninitated thieves, but a lot of people
just don't see a need for them. So, no one implements them. If you see
the need: go ahead.
It is a problem of introspective languages since day 1: if the program
knows everything about itself, everyone can make the program speak
about itself.
Regards,
Florian
--
Florian Gilcher
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