Hi Scott, Welcome to the list! Lots of of interesting discussions, loads of deep Rebol wisdom, and some brilliant lateral thinkers. So do stick around.
> Hi first post, I am intrigued by the different flavor > of discussion one gets with a non open source > community. There are some common issues too. I remember when PGP was floating around as a source, a crucial question was "how do I know this source has NOT been inappropriately modified?" A couple of points responding to yours. Self-inspecting code is a good technique. As I wrote earlier, I've been experimenting with checksumming as a QA tools, example. if (checksum read %myapp.r) <> 3574439 [print "Re-install, please" halt] But, with the source available, this is so easy to bypass: ;if (checksum read %myapp.r) <> 3574439 [print "Re-install, please" halt] I've also experimented with having an installation routine which sends me an email. That makes copying at least evident. But because Rebol has such a "light touch" on a machine someone can install my application elsewhere simply by copying the installed application files. Now, if (on windows) I could write and check a Registry entry, my installation routine would be harder to bypass (they'd have to find the bit that reads the registry and comment that out). I also--as you did--think about connecting to my server on a regular basis. But I saw two problems here. First, the availability of my server becomes an issue in someone else's downtime. That's far too centralised an approach for me. Second, I am working with many Not-for-Profits across the world. Some of them have only intermittent or expensive ways of connecting to the Internet. And some may be working a long way away from a phone. Enforcing them to make regular phone calls is not an available option....It would goad them into wielding a few semicolons on the code. I have no problem in many cases for people to have a copy of my code. I just want as many barriers between my application and their copy of the source code as possible. With C source a user has got to be very determined to change the source, recompile, relink, rebuild and perhaps reinstall before their change takes place, With Rebol as it stands now, a curious user can junk an entire application by loading it into Word to take a look, and accidentally saving it back as non-ASCII. I think applications that fragile are scary. Sunanda. -- To unsubscribe from this list, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, without the quotes.
