DN500888338

Subject: Hide the Source, Luke - DN [1]

Andy Hunt <andy@ffaltd.demon.co.uk> - 14 Jul 1999 - comp.lang.tcl

 Hi folks,

 We're happy users of Tcl and after supplying a few software packages
 using Tcl we are beginning to get a little bit uneasy about having hard
 won algorithms available for inspection.  A lot of our stuff is in
 compiled libraries which is ok, but the excellent high level properties
 of Tcl mean that we've got excellent (I hope) high level algorithms in
 plain view.

 So far these are the ideas we've come up with.

 1. Buy TclPro and use the byte code compiler routines. We'd like to but
 we can't afford it at the moment.

 2. Use a obfuscator program, something like Frink. How much protection
 would something like this give?

 3. Use Trf and TCrypt to create a modified source routine that would
 read encrypted tcl files. Is this possible?

 4. Write our own decryption routine to unpack encrypted tcl files and
 feed them to source.

 Anyone got any opinions, experience, ideas or pointers on this subject.
 I can't be the first person to ask and apologies if I've missed the
 obvious place to look.

 Andy

 Andy Hunt
 Software Engineer
 Foster Findlay Associates