Distributing hidden Ruby code

Ruby
1

There was some discussion in the past here about how to distribute
Ruby programs in a way that their source code is not visible to
people. Today I saw that a company called Chilkat is doing something
like this. I have not checked out the details, but someone might want
to.

Les

2

In message
[email protected], Leslie
Viljoen [email protected] writes

There was some discussion in the past here about how to distribute
Ruby programs in a way that their source code is not visible to
people. Today I saw that a company called Chilkat is doing something
like this. I have not checked out the details, but someone might want
to.

http://www.chilkatsoft.com/

I couldn’t find anything on the homepage or products page that matches a
simple text search for “Ruby”.

Stephen

3

Stephen K. wrote:

In message
[email protected], Leslie
Viljoen [email protected] writes

There was some discussion in the past here about how to distribute
Ruby programs in a way that their source code is not visible to
people. Today I saw that a company called Chilkat is doing something
like this. I have not checked out the details, but someone might want
to.

http://www.chilkatsoft.com/

I couldn’t find anything on the homepage or products page that matches a
simple text search for “Ruby”.

Stephen

L H column → Downloads

(maybe it is so new they haven’t updated the website yet?)

4

More importantly…why would you want to distribute obfuscated ruby
apps? If it is able to be sent (finally) to the parser / interpreter,
then it can be broken by a hacker. The first condition is a requisite
(else the code would never run). So why go to the trouble? Why not just
license your code under a specific license that denies all reusability?
If you feel that you really must obfuscate, try these links:

http://www.rubyinside.com/px-a-quick-and-silly-ruby-obfuscation-system-7.html
http://blog.segment7.net/articles/2006/03/21/obfuscator-update

Regards,
Jordan

5

They are not really providing Ruby code, but writing their code in C
and providing a binary compiled into a DLL that Ruby can load. I am no
fan of closed source but this provides an option if someone wanted to
sell components useable from Ruby.

The components do also provide something useful I think, if you
can’t write your own and need a solution right now. I’m pleased people
are thinking about Ruby support for such things while we wait for an
open source version.

Les