From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2008-10-17T17:37:13+09:00
Subject: Re: I found way to protect Source Code! :)


On Oct 16, 2008, at 23:10 , Sasha Bee wrote:

> Could you suggest anything real to protect the Ruby code? We are still
> working on our project and we use Ruby for it and need to protect the
> code. We are still searching for a good solution for it. We are not  
> just
> Ruby enthusiasts and we are doing a real project. I wish we choose C  
> to
> develop our product and then have no problems in protecting the code.
> But we use Ruby now for many reasons...

no, not really... anything that has ruby objects and ruby methods  
involved can be popped wide open. If I can get my grubby paws on it, I  
can play with it

> We do not want any conversions like Ruby to C or JRuby. We do not need
> or want Java for its slowness. (We just do not need Java - don't  
> want to
> get into a battle with Java fans :) And also we understand there is no
> ideal 100% proved protection solutions for any language. I know there
> are some good encoders for PHP but what do we have for Ruby?

there is zenobfuscate which translates to C, that prevents my above  
statement from occurring... as others have pointed out, if you are  
just munging source, you're doing nothing... nothing at all to protect  
things. encryption? it needs to be decrypted in order to run and then  
you're dealing with my original claim again...

I don't know of any other method than removing the ruby source entirely.