Re: hide code
by tirwhan (Abbot) on Nov 22, 2007 at 15:28 UTC
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Tell your boss it can't be done in any reliable or secure manner. If he doesn't believe you, point him to the nodes listed under Re: Hiding your Script (or summarise them for him in a language he understands).
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Re: hide code
by marto (Cardinal) on Nov 22, 2007 at 16:45 UTC
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Re: hide code
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Nov 22, 2007 at 19:55 UTC
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The proper solution is licensing. MySQL seems to do okay letting everyone see their source code and people paying them when they need to use the non-free license. Remember - even compiled C code can be decompiled. It's all a matter of how much people care to figure out what you're doing. Frankly, most people couldn't care less about how your code works so long as it does work. The people who do care generally tell you how to fix it. What's wrong with that?
My criteria for good software:
- Does it work?
- Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
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Re: hide code
by Joost (Canon) on Nov 23, 2007 at 02:12 UTC
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As an aside to what other people are telling you (i.e. that whatever you do is reversible, given enough time/money/intelligence): that's probably true for any reasonably documented/researched language. Java decompilers are quite common, for example. It probably even doesn't matter whether you're using a high- or low-level language. High level language implementations probably have all kinds of recognizable fingerprints, and low-level languages are "by definition" either close to assembly and/or easy to decompile.
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Re: hide code
by rgiskard (Hermit) on Nov 22, 2007 at 16:50 UTC
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It couldn't hurt to take a closer look at
Perl Archiving Toolkit's filters at CPAN . It has a couple of packages (Obfuscation, Bleach, etc.) that could suit your needs. | [reply] |
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Acme::Bleach it's a option. From the module description, module removes all the unsightly printable characters from your source file.
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Re: hide code
by okram (Monk) on Nov 22, 2007 at 15:57 UTC
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Re: hide code
by codeacrobat (Chaplain) on Nov 22, 2007 at 17:24 UTC
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Re: hide code
by fenLisesi (Priest) on Nov 22, 2007 at 18:49 UTC
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Ah, reminds me of CryPerl., my first post. Heh heh. For certain application types, you may be able to use VMWare to create and distribute a virtual appliance. The freely available tools are enough to do this. For the preferably minimal OS to go into the appliance, rPath provides some nifty tools that will also allow you, reportedly, to easily dish out software updates to your clients, the way MS does, for example. | [reply] |
Re: hide code
by KurtSchwind (Chaplain) on Nov 23, 2007 at 00:01 UTC
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The answer to this depends on who you are trying to hide the source code from. If you are talking about delivering an application for internal company use and you just want to keep the monkeys from screwing with it, you can use a few obfuscation techniques as discussed by others.
If you need to deploy this code to paying customers, your best bet is going to be to use perlcc and go with binaries.
Either way, you'll have to decide if that's enough protection because in the end, an experienced perl person can reverse what you've done to hide the code. Or reverse it enough to dink with it.
--
I used to drive a Heisenbergmobile, but every time I looked at the speedometer, I got lost.
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Re: hide code
by pipedings (Initiate) on Nov 22, 2007 at 22:28 UTC
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Kill all the unnecessary whitespace. Change all variable names (by regex/search/replace) to gibberish.
Or just compile it with perlcc and deliver binaries. | [reply] |
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perlcc is no more. It hasn't really ever been.
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Re: hide code
by gex (Scribe) on Nov 24, 2007 at 13:51 UTC
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