[C++-sig] Protect your Python code ? Or do I have to write everything in C++ ?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 13, 2004, at 10:08 AM, Billy Gnosis wrote:

> Can I protect my python code - meaning, that nobody can read the 
> source code when I want to publish it ? Is it already enough if I use 
> .pyc files instead of py ? Or is it like in Java, that you can revert 
> the compilition process in order to get the source ?

I've never seen a polished tool to take Python bytecode and produce 
working source, though one would not be terribly hard to write.  Python 
comes with the dis module, which can give you a human readable version 
of the bytecode, but it does not give you python source.

You are completely mistaken if you think C++.  You can run C++ code 
through a couple tools and step through it in a debugger if you care 
enough to know what it's doing.  For example, I can read assembly 
language for a few different CPU architectures, so not having source 
wouldn't really stop me from reverse engineering an algorithm if I 
really wanted to.

Chances are, your code will not be worth the effort regardless of which 
language you choose to write it in... and if it is worth the effort, it 
doesn't really matter which language you write it in because anything 
can be reverse-engineered.

-bob