Joe wrote:
So what’s your software dude?
Sorry but my “BS” detector went off when he said “and gross 6 figures a
month”. You don’t build an entire app in a new framework that is going
to gross you six figures a month and then ask near the end of
development how your going to protect it now.
Ben J. wrote:
decide to host it myself. Although our company does have a very good
lawyer so it wouldn’t be too hard enforcing the license.
…until someone in China stumbles upon it and your lawyer means nothing
at that point. Its hard and costly to enforce your license
internationally and probably almost impossible to do so in China.
Anything can be decompiled. I remember back in the day decompiling
Windows to Assembly language just for the fun of it.
Ben J. wrote:
I don’t really understand what you are saying here. I’m about to sell a
piece of software to multiple companies and gross 6 figures a month. I
do not want people to steal it. I can’t afford to be naive and assume
people won’t steal the code.
Its not the decompiler or backwards engineers you need to worry about.
Its the copy-cats. If your idea is that truely revolutionary then it
will be copied in no time - especially if you’ve proved it can be done
in Rails, then any good Railer can duplicate your functionality easily.
All you can hope for is to get enough marketshare first. Look how many
times Digg has been cloned. Look how people tried to mimic eBay (Amazon
auctions, Yahoo auctions, etc.).
That was my bs detector too. Oh, and btw, if you’re expecting to
gross 10^6 and your name is not Bill Gates, then I fear for your
disappointment.
As far as protecting your investment, A) self-hosting is a good
alternative to explore. B) If you’re idea is worth so much, then why
not sell your services for that much? I percieve that it is a very
dinosaur company (big oil?) that would spend $1M/year on software even
thought the people who wrote it can only get $200/hr for their
expertise and services (and AFAIK, not too many railsers are garnering
$200/hr?!?!)
Peter F.
On 8/4/06, Matthew P. [email protected] wrote:
Obviously the definition of “obfuscate” for this contract is pretty poor,
because at least Python and Java are pretty trivial to reverse engineer.
Yes, but with Java you have Excelsior (http://www.excelsior-usa.com),
which is an awesome product and does what ZenObfuscator (I believe)
hopes to do…compiles to native and protects your IP.
Having used Excelsior quite a bit for Java projects, I cannot say
enough good things about it.
JB
Steve I. wrote:
Joe wrote:
So what’s your software dude?
Sorry but my “BS” detector went off when he said “and gross 6 figures a
month”. You don’t build an entire app in a new framework that is going
to gross you six figures a month and then ask near the end of
development how your going to protect it now.
Sorry but I don’t think anyone asked you if you think any of this is BS
and frankly that has nothing to do with the topic of the thread. Why is
it such a big deal to ask for an obfuscater or some way to protect code
that I’m going to be distributing? This is my first rails project and I
have all kinds of questions.
So my “programmer and no business experience” detector went off and told
me that if you are compairing Microsoft to my company that makes close
to 7 figures a month, then you are highly uneducated with how much a
decent company grosses each month. Lastly, I never said we were selling
this to a single company, and from the nature of the thread, you should
be able to determine that we are selling this multiple times. Ha ha.
Anways, thanks for the help it really cleared up the picture with ruby
and protecting the ruby code.
Ben J. wrote:
So my “programmer and no business experience” detector went off and told
me that if you are compairing Microsoft to my company that makes close
to 7 figures a month, then you are highly uneducated with how much a
decent company grosses each month. Lastly, I never said we were selling
this to a single company, and from the nature of the thread, you should
be able to determine that we are selling this multiple times. Ha ha.Anways, thanks for the help it really cleared up the picture with ruby
and protecting the ruby code.
Let’s assume you do know what you’re doing. I don’t know who your target
market it, but you do. Protect yourself with adequate copyright language
that you get from a good IP attorney. And then market the hell out of
it.
Believe me, if people are stealing your stuff, that’s a good thing,
because nobody steals anything that’s not interesting. If your customers
are large companies, I guarantee they won’t steal from you. They never
buy anything they won’t commit to long-term, and you’re more valuable to
them healthy. Besides, they fear lawsuits mightily. They’ll pay late,
but they will pay.
If your customers are small companies, your marketing costs will far
outweigh your development costs anyway, and the same will apply to
anyone who steals from you, but you will have a head start.
If your customers are individuals, then this is almost certainly a
science project and not a business anyway, so the more you get stolen
from the better off you are.
Bottom line: get your code out there and stop worrying about theft.
On 8/3/06, Ben J. [email protected] wrote:
I just made a rails application that I plan to sell and dsitribute. I
want to distribute it without having to worry about someone stealing the
code and selling their own version. How do I do this? Is there a ruby
obfuscator or anything that can keep someone from seeing the code?Thanks for your help.
If your customers are big enough, consider selling the box that it runs
on.
Sincerely,
On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 10:08:15AM -0400, J B wrote:
On 8/4/06, Matthew P. [email protected] wrote:
Obviously the definition of “obfuscate” for this contract is pretty poor,
because at least Python and Java are pretty trivial to reverse engineer.Yes, but with Java you have Excelsior (http://www.excelsior-usa.com),
which is an awesome product and does what ZenObfuscator (I believe)
hopes to do…compiles to native and protects your IP.
Suggested endings for your sentence:
… which destroys the core benefit of Java (and to some extent Ruby)
–
platform independence.
… except that even native code isn’t that hard to rip apart if
needed.
… except all the interesting bits, such as what you’re actually
doing,
which can be worked out without seeing any code whatsoever.
… but of course, “protecting your IP” is a complete smokescreen –
customers want a business that satisfies their needs, not one that
spends
all it’s resources locking everything away.
–
You have a 16-bit quantity, but 5 bits of it are here and 2 bits of it
are
there… and 2 bits of it are back here and 3 bits of it are up there.
The
C code to extract useful data had so many >> and << operators in it that
it
looked like the C++ version of “hello world”. – Matt Roberds, ASR
Peter F. wrote:
That was my bs detector too. Oh, and btw, if you’re expecting to
gross 10^6 and your name is not Bill Gates, then I fear for your
disappointment.
As far as protecting your investment, A) self-hosting is a good
alternative to explore. B) If you’re idea is worth so much, then why
not sell your services for that much?
Yeah, I used to sell software for distribution. Dealing with support on
the myriad of systems, OS’s, configurations, other installed software,
etc. was a true nightmare. Selling a service where you own and control
the machines is much easier - like Basecamp and Salesforce.
Joe
J B wrote:
enough good things about it.
If there are only a few parts that need protecting, then you might try
writing a ruby module in C code and then linking from Ruby.
Sincerely,
Jason
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