From: James Dinkel Date: 2008-10-17T22:49:16+09:00 Subject: Re: I found way to protect Source Code! :) Michal Suchanek wrote: > On 17/10/2008, Ryan Davis wrote: >> > >> > 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. >> > > Remember DOS games? These employed many baroque copy protection > schemes including specially formatted or perhaps even specially > manufactured floppies so that nobody could make a copy with standard > software or even any standard floppy drive. Still the popular ones > were disassembled and circulated without the protection, and the lame > ones forgotten. > > So if your software is worth anything you can only reasonably protect > it by selling it as service hosted on servers protected both in > software and physically. > > If you just want people paying money for using your software forget > protection. It's just additional effort and if you are lucky it does > not get in your way too much. Sell the software for price that people > who are likely going to use it can afford, and make the payment method > an easy one. > > Also services like support and customization help getting some money > from your users. > > If your application is that lame that anybody looking at the source > would run away screaming in horror then you probably need a better > coder. > > I guess that's pretty much all that can be said about code protection. > > Thanks > > Michal C can be reverse engineered and java jars can be converted back to source code. No program's source is 100% safe. The suggestion of selling it as a service and hosting the app on your own servers is as close as you're going to get. So don't freak out too much because you can't get perfect code protection. It just doesn't exist and yet millions of people still pay for software. Personally I do use rubyscript2exe for all my software (used internally around the office). That is mainly so I don't have to install the entire ruby interpreter on every computer that uses the applications, but it also has an added bonus of not making your source code readily available. It would be trivial to get to the source for someone that knows rubyscript2exe, but most people aren't even going to give that a thought. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.