From: "Peter Edwards" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>Can you tell me how to find the source code from a perlapp program?
Everyone says that it is very simple, but nobody was able to do it.

The answer is in the manual
http://perldoc.perl.org/perlfaq3.html#How-can-I-hide-the-source-for-my-Perl-
program%3f

I have read:
Security through obscurity, the name for hiding your bugs instead of fixing them, is little security indeed.

This is what I need. I already said that I don't want an absolute security.

I'm still not really sure what you're trying to achieve as you haven't
really said what your app will do. There are several approaches to consider:

For the moment I want to create 2 versions of an application, one that can run under Windows, and the other one that can run under Linux. The program will have a server that listens to the com port and store the data in a database. (I will also need to find a database that can be protected, but without installing a server, but this is another discussion). And the other part of the program could be made in Catalyst. It will get the data from the database and show it in a browser from the intranet of the client, to authorised users. I want to hide the database connection string, and the code needed to connect, to authorize the users, and so on. I don't want that the system admin of the client to be able to modify the data in the database, and he will never know the password to it. The database will get information from a phone exchange.

1) Use a remote server to host part of the application and talk to it from a front end via SOAP and XML-RPC. That's a lot easier than it sounds provided
your users have net access http://search.cpan.org/~rjray/RPC-XML-0.59/.

In this case, it is not possible because that application might not have access to the internet, and the client wouldn't want someone from outside to know about their information anyway.

2) Write part of your app in VB or C# and supply a DLL wrapped in
copy-protection. It will still be possible to crack but a lot more difficult than trying to hide perl. Bear in mind if your software is popular enough it
only takes one person to crack it and list it on astalavista

I don't know VB at all, and C# not very well, but the program should also run under Linux, so this is not an option anyway.

3) Go the Open Source route. My customers have started going this way. Why?
A lot cheaper. Cost of developing software is 50% testing and if you use
popular Open Source or sponsor its development you get a lot of free testing
and quicker time to stable software.

Yes I agree, but the customers would prefer to get the program from another source, and don't pay anything for it.

Octavian

_______________________________________________
List: [email protected]
Listinfo: http://lists.rawmode.org/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/

Reply via email to