Technical Answer - Protecting code in python

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 09:56:12 -0700, flit wrote:

> First I wanna thanks the all people who gives good contribution to
> this thread, thank you all..

But they haven't. They've given answers to an ill-posed question. How can
anyone tell you how to "protect code" when you haven't told us what you
want to protect against?



>> Until you tell us what you are trying to protect against, your question
>> is meaningless.
> 
> In this time I supposed someone took too much coffee..But will
> ignore..

That is the absolute core of the problem. What are you trying to protect
against? If you can't even answer that question, then how do you expect to
find a solution?

If a customer came to you and offered you money to "protect this data",
what would you do? 

Surely the FIRST thing you would need to do is find out, protect it from
what? What problem does the customer want you to solve?

Does the customer want error correction codes so he can transmit it
over a noisy data channel? Does the customer just want an off-site backup
he can take home? Does he want it encrypted? Or does he just want it
copyrighted, so it is legally protected? Or does he want you to go out and
hire a big strong man with a club to stand over the disk and hit people on
the head if they get too close?


>> Is your program valuable? Is it worth money? Then the 90% of script
>> kiddies will just wait three days, and download the program off the
>> Internet after the real hackers have broken your protection.
>>
>> If it is NOT valuable, then why on earth do you think people will put up
>> with whatever "protection" you use? Why won't they just use another
>> program?
> 
> It´s doesn´t matter if it is the next BIG HIT Ultra-fast-next-google
> thing or a programm to take control of my "pet-people-living-in-
> welfare-trying-to-be-political"
> It´s a technical question, 

No it isn't. You only think it is a technical question. 

You said it yourself: you have to make money. How much money are you going
to make if you spend all your time solving the technical question of
"protecting" your software, if nobody wants your software? What is the
value of the protection? Should you spend a thousand hours protecting it,
or a hundred hours, or ten, or one, or one minute, or nothing at all?

What's your business model for making money? That is far more important
than whether you can send out a .pyc file or how many people know how to
use the Python disassembler.

Maybe you'll make MORE money by giving the software away for free and
charging for services. Would you rather sell ten copies of your software
at $20 each, or give away ten thousand copies and charge five hours of
consulting services at $100 an hour?

The "technical problem" is the LEAST important part of the real problem,
which is "how do I make money from this?".


-- 
Steven.