From: John Wells <lists@...>
Date: 2009-03-03T22:51:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Compiling a Ruby app

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