I think it's interesting that a lot of people are taking this as a question in the form of "is this a good idea?" I agree with almost everything said above about how code obfuscation/encryption/"compilation"/etc. is largely a waste of time when it comes to actually protecting anything.

However, I want to point out two things:

  1. All of those very good reasons not to hide code mean nothing if your boss requires you to do the hiding. Gripe, complain, present well-reasoned arguments on why it's a bad idea, but at the end of the day, you may still have to do the dirty.
  2. Trade secret law requires "due care" from an organization in protecting a secret, or it loses its "trade secret" status. If there's some method in the code that the org wants to keep others from using, it has two choices: patent or obfuscate1. Since software patents are evil, I'd rather see them obfuscate. Yes, it's broken, but it's probably enough to show that you tried to protect your secret.

In summary, avoid code-hiding techniques whever possible; but, when it's strictly necessary, I say use something as lightweight as possible. I'm curious what kind of performance hit is incurred by using Filter::Decrypt in this context...

{1}: copyright doesn't apply here, as that only protects the particular expression of an idea, not the idea itself.

<–radiant.matrix–>
A collection of thoughts and links from the minds of geeks
The Code that can be seen is not the true Code
I haven't found a problem yet that can't be solved by a well-placed trebuchet

In reply to Re: using source filter with mod_perl scripts by radiantmatrix
in thread using source filter with mod_perl scripts by avo

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