From: Matthew Diephouse <matt@...>
Date: 2003-07-09T10:07:10+09:00
Subject: Re: My brief and torrid affair with Ruby.

Ray Cote wrote:
> At 9:08 AM +0900 7/9/03, Daniel Carrera wrote:
>> Finally, who does making your program open source inhibit you from 
>> making it
>> commercial?  I mean, if you are currently using Perl and Python you 
>> are certainly
>> not hiding the source code.  You can't!  What's the problem with 
>> selling a
>> GPL-covered application?
> 
> Actually, we _are_ hiding our source code.
> We use various utilities for converting Perl or Python to 
> double-clickable windows executables.
> Ruby has this ability as well with the Exerb (though it is not quite as 
> 'hidden' as the Perl or Python examples).
> 
> There are a variety of ways of 'hiding' code. One of the projects we're 
> currently designing consists of a sealed box delivered to the user, a 
> sort of 'payment appliance' if you will. The end user not only has no 
> access to the code on the machine, they have no need for access. 
> However, under the GPL, I would be legally bound to distribute source 
> code for the program on that machine.

Actually, you're probably _not_ hiding your source code. Are you using 
perl2exe? Take a look at http://www.net-security.org/vuln.php?id=2464 . 
Please note also that this probably applies to all such packaging schemes.

matt