It's encoding, not encryption or obfuscation.

1. Encryption does NOT require a secret. Look up ROT13 on wikipedia
2. My weak encryption does have a secret if you use choose to hide the key properly in the source. That's up to you.

I suggest, for your perusal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rot13
http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=890723

Encryption does NOT require a secret.

Again? You really should start reading the material to which you reference before contradicting.

to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge

To consider ROT13 and perlc to be forms of encryption, one must consider the algorithm itself to be the secret. First rule of encryption: Never consider the algorithm a secret.

But enough theory. In practice, perlc provides the original intact without knowing either the algorithm or the salt you call "key". Objections over names don't really matter.

To consider ROT13 and perlc to be forms of encryption,

To consider ROT13 to be encryption, you have to know the definition of encryption. You choose to ignore it. I can't help you with that.

I'm sure I'll get more negative reputation for this - someone should probably go to Wikipedia (and every other technical source on the subject) and let them know that Ikegami has redefined encryption and ROT13 no longer counts.

Furthermore, I don't think we agree on the word intact:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intact

The code is not intact, it is transformed by the key. Whether or not you want to admit that "weak encryption" exists is up to you, but the code is not intact in the executable.

This is the most ridiculous conversation I've had on the net, and that's saying a lot.