python obfuscate

[Ben Finney]

Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> writes:

> On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 16:27:27 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
>
> > Another reason I've heard of is to try to reduce support efforts.
> > 
> > If you distribute something that's easy to modify, then people will.
>
> The majority of people will treat your app as a black box. Of course, a 
> small minority (either out of actual competence, or sheer incompetence) 
> will try to modify anything supplied as source code.

Further, those who are motivated to modify the product they receive from
you will often have motivations that remain even in the absence of
source code.

In many cases that motivation is strong enough they will *still* modify
the product in an attempt to get it to do what they want. So in those
cases, even the total absence of source code is not achieving the
putative goal of “stop the recipient from modifying the product”.

> (And who is to say that they shouldn't be permitted to, if they've
> bought your product?)

Indeed. People in the position of selling something to a customer need
to stop trying to have it both ways: Either the vendor owns the product,
or the customer does.

Either the customer is paying to own the product, and thereby has full
rights to use that product and modify it and sell it on to other people
without the vendor having any further say in the matter; or: The
vendor continues to own the product even while the customer possesses
it, and is responsible for controlling how it's used and is culpable for
any harmful effects of that use.

A third way is possible, but fans of obfuscation probably won't like it:
Software is inherently not amenable to the limits of scarce physical
property at all, and attempts to treat it as scarce and exclusive and
“owned” by one party are futile and counter to physical laws.

This is the position taken by Thomas Jefferson in 1813: “If nature has
made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive
property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea.”

<URL:http://questioncopyright.org/>

-- 
 \      “By instructing students how to learn, unlearn, and relearn, a |
  `\         powerful new dimension can be added to education.” —Alvin |
_o__)                                    Toffler, _Future Shock_, 1970 |
Ben Finney