From: Michael Bevilacqua-Linn <michael.bevilacqualinn@...>
Date: 2007-09-02T01:41:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Seeing the source

------=_Part_2393_19759162.1188664913715
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

On 9/1/07, Michel Cabili <michel.cabili@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, then I guess that we can't obfuscate the code with Ruby.


Sure you could.  Just how effective obfuscation would be in *any* language
depends on exactly what you're trying to accomplish, but it will not prevent
anyone with a fair bit of time and determination from figuring out what your
code is doing.  It might be enough to prevent the average person from taking
your code and using it directly in their product/project, who knows...  Even
with a compiled language, it's generally possible to decompile from the
bytecode or machine code.

It's not a necessity. It's just that I'm used to compiled languages in
> wich, if the project isn't that complex, you basically give one file to
> the user.


Doesn't seem related to obfuscation...  Ruby has a pretty good package
management system called RubyGems, that might be what you're looking for?

<troll>
> If I really need this kind of feature I guess I could develop a library
> in C that would encrypt all my '.rb' files into another file and decode
> them when launching the application... or something like that.
> </troll>


Actually, you really couldn't.  You'd need to put the decryption key
somewhere where the client can get at it.  Companies with much greater
resources than you and I try to do this all the time.  The scheme is
generally broken in around 4 hours by some Nordic teenager (it's cold and
dark there, not much else to do.)

Good luck and have fun with Ruby!

>
>
>

------=_Part_2393_19759162.1188664913715--