Re: Obscuring code?

At 02:22 PM 7/25/00 -0700, [email protected] wrote:

>I don't know if this has been covered or not (I just subscribed and
>didn't see an archive for the list), but I'd like to propose some
>method, whether built into Perl6 or completely external, to provide
>obscuring of source code.

I've never seen the point in this, but all the jobs I've worked at have 
been with packages where the clients all have source, either because the 
vendor abandoned the market and the failsafe license clauses kicked in, or 
because the vendor was expecting the clients to go and fix all the 
fundamental design flaws. (Features! I meant features! Really... :) Having 
said that, I really don't care, and it's certainly possible to do now. 
(It'd take some fancy XS footwork, but it can be done, and with something 
more secure than filters)

It's not inconceivable that perl 6 will end up emitting, at some stage of 
the game, a stream of data that is a fully functioning program but can't be 
reasonably turned back into perl source. A heavily optimizing bytecode 
compiler may do this, as would a backend that emitted java bytecode. 
*Specifically* designing this feature in will require either replacing me, 
or an Edict From Larry. I will not, however, trade execution speed for the 
ability to do decompilation.

					Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
[email protected]                         have teddy bears and even
                                      teddy bears get drunk