[CALUG] What would YOU do?

[Jason C. Miller]

With all due respect, I can tell that you probably don't operate under 
the same business models that we (my company and I) do.  In our 
business, it's about value-added software and often the need to deploy 
rapidly prototyped applications that are well in the infancy of their 
life cycles.  Anyone who's ever gone head-to-head with another company 
to win a contract based solely on your ability to out-innovate your 
competition (and quickly) would understand that.

Allowing access to our software by these competitors with blatantly open 
scripts is unacceptable, at best.

I'm really going to try to avoid going into the ages-old rhetoric of 
open and closed source software.  This is also hardly a contractual 
issue.  I would love to see someone tell Microsoft...."Sure....beat 
everyone to market with your innovations and make sure that you have a 
great EULA to blanket your yet-to-be-secured source because that will 
DEFINATELY keep any drooling competitors from being influenced by your 
problem solving and coding methods".

I'm just a grunt engineer.  I hate dealing with money and I hate dealing 
with managment and contractual issues even more.  I simply wanted to ask 
some seasoned geeks how they would go about protecting the privacy of 
their work until their projects became a little more mature and secure.  
I most certainly am not advocating closed source software or even the 
proprietarization (is that a real word??) of any open source software. 

I mean, things like iptables/ipchains is open source, yet there are 
probably plenty of people out there that wouldn't share their firewall 
rules with ANYBODY because maybe they have a particular way of doing 
things that they think brings value to them.  Same concept!  There's 
also openssh.  You can use that to secure everything but the kitchen 
sink.  Just because you're securing your stuff doesn't mean you're 
wanting to close-source everything.

My question is a technical one...pure and simple.  I've got some stuff 
that I want to keep prying eyes away from. 
When I want good insight from some good professionals on how to get 
things done, I typically come here first (well...after Google).  I 
seriously doubt that telling a lawyer "They stole lines from my 
script!!" is the solution to my problem.

Anyway...for anyone out there who's interested.  I'm currently looking 
at the Solaris 'crypt' utility.   Hopefully that'll bring me down some 
good roads.  :)


                                                                                        
-j

James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:

> Don't confuse Ownership with Visibility. You can still write contracts 
> and restrict usage and distribution even tho the source code is 
> available. Your attempt to hide it only does the following: [1] delays 
> your development time while you work out a solution [2] further delays 
> your development while you debug the mess. [3] delays the finish 
> product  while the finished product runs [4] pisses off your customers 
> and everyone who hears about it because you are assuming that they 
> will steal it if you don't hide it.
>
> Given that Linux is Open Source Software, you won't get much support 
> here for what you are trying to do here.
>
> We understand that you wish to make money, retain ownership and 
> rights. There is still a way to do that without closing your source. 
> Take the High Road and Find the Middle Ground.
>
> JIM
>
> Jason C. Miller wrote:
>
>> I would like to get some advice from all the smart folks out there.
>>
>> I was tasked to create a non-trivial application in an unbelievably 
>> unreasonable amount of time.  So, I basically just made a nice 
>> front-end with a bunch of buttons (using Glade) and simply made 
>> system() calls to external bash scripts for each button.  Not my 
>> favorite way of doing business, but, gotta do what ya gotta do. 
>> Anyhoo, I will be making incremental releases of this software and 
>> will be filling in the gaps as I go along.  One problem is that it is 
>> going to be a while before I have the time to implement all of the 
>> button functions in C/C++. 
>> My question to everyone is this...
>> For the sake of trying to keep code proprietary in the interim , does 
>> anybody have any ideas as to how one could maintain the scripts in a 
>> way that would make it difficult for someone else to understand the 
>> logic that executes within them? 
>> As an example, I considered writing the scripts in PERL and using 
>> perlcc to compile the scripts into system binaries.  This would allow 
>> me to maintain the scripts for development but deploy them as 
>> binaries for delivery. However, in the past, I haven't been very 
>> pleased with the perl compiler and would be happy to avoid it.
>>
>> I don't have a very extensive history in subversive development 
>> practices, so I was hoping that someone out there might have some 
>> ideas.  :)
>>
>>                                       -jason
>>
>>
>>


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My blog: http://millersplace.blogspot.com/ 
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