More on Protecting Source Code

[Martin v. Loewis]

"David LeBlanc" <whisper at oz.net> writes:

> * Owners of property have the right to control it. If you disagree and own a
> nice car or house, I'll be right over :->

What are you protecting your car against? Somebody taking it and using
it without your permission, right? Not against somebody analysing it
and building a similar car. 

That would be for the car makers to protect; I believe they don't
protect it by technical means against a determined engineer. Instead,
they protect it with patents and trademarks (and, admittedly, by the
fact that you need significant facilities to copy a car).

For software, I think the economical risk is that somebody uses your
software without giving you the money you want - not that somebody
sits down and studies your code for days, to write a program that he
could have written himself from scratch in the same time.

Regards,
Martin