From: John Wells <lists@...>
Date: 2005-08-19T05:44:27+09:00
Subject: Protecting commercial ruby code with public/private key encryption

I was speaking with a co-worker today about the disappointment we feel
when we can't write commercial, distributable client-side code with Ruby
today...there's just no good way to protect your IP on the client side.

We came upon a simple(?) idea and I was hoping that the List might help us
expand it and fill in some gaps:

Could one not modify the source of the Ruby interpreter to load a public
key and then only accept code encrypted with the equivalent private
version?  Would this provide adequate protection, or does it only mean
that the  hacker would have to download the interpreter and make the same
modifications, loading my public key into it, and programmatically to spit
out the unencrypted code after it has passed through decryption?  Is there
any way to make this sufficiently hard to do so to the point where any
reasonably complex application is protected?  Similar to byte code
obfuscation?

Thanks for your insight.

John