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Selling Python Software

John J. Lee jjl at pobox.com
Mon Nov 3 08:06:48 EST 2003 
Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:
[...]
> "Can not be decompiled" is impossible whatever language you're using.
> 
> "*extreme* difficulty" is in the eye of the beholder.  You can e.g.
> add layers of encryption/decription to the bytecode, etc, but whatever
> you do somebody else can undo.  Depending on the relative skills of
> you and the "somebody else" the ratio (your effort to keep things
> secret, to theirs to uncover them) can be any.
[...]

Whie this is all true, you seem to put undue emphasis on the fact that
it's always *possible* to decompile stuff.  Isn't the point you make
in your last sentence actually crucial here?  The game is to make your
opponent (customer ;-) incur more expense in decompiling it than it
would cost to just go ahead and pay you, is it not?  And yeah, you
also have to take into account how much it costs you to come up with
the protection scheme, of course.

So, is there a good practical solution of that form, for Python code
of this sort of size (or any other size)?  I suspect the answer for
standard Python may be no, while the answer for optimising compilers
may be yes -- but that's just a guess.


John
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