hide python code !

[Fuzzyman]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> Fuzzyman wrote:
> > Bayazee wrote:
> > > can we hide a python code ?
> > > if i want to write a commercial software can i hide my source code from
> > > users access ?
> > > we can conver it to pyc but this file can decompiled ... so ...!!
>
> [...]
>
> > You can distribute the compiled byte-code files (*.pyc) which are
> > harder to turn back into source code.
>
> As the man said, and I've seen various proprietary software companies
> do just that.
>
> > There was a product called decompyle which could do it, but although
> > there is a version floating around which works for Python 2.4 I've
> > never heard of anyone getting it to work.
>
> I've got decompyle to work in the recent past (about a year or so ago)
> - the trick was to find the Debian package and to make some minor
> adjustments to the code to work with whatever breakage the 2.3 -> 2.4
> upgrade caused.
>
> [...]
>
> > I never understand the knee-jerk reaction on this mailing list to
> > answer people who ask this question by telling them they don't really
> > want to do it...
>
> Well, given the pace of technological development and the disregard in
> some environments for perpetual backward compatibility, how much of
> your infrastructure would you implement in vendor-supplied binaries,
> especially when the vendor is a one man plus dog operation? When the
> binaries don't work on your newly-upgraded system and the vendor is on
> holiday (possibly for good), it doesn't look like a knee-jerk reaction
> any more.
>

If you distribute applications with py2exe then your application is no
longer dependent on the installed version of Python.

The question keeps getting asked because a lot of new programmers are
looking to create programs that they will sell. A lot of these will be
good programmers, and some of the software will be successful. Telling
them 'you can't do that with Python', does no good to Python itself.

In fact what you can do with Python is not a lot worse than most other
languages, and almost certainly *good enough* for this sort of thing.

Fuzzyman
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/index.shtml

> Paul