Read Stalmmans free as in freedom on why software should always be free, not as in Free Beer but as in freedom. The GPL hás ira viral nature for a purpose. The body of work in which you and I really to write software solutions is not based on the idea of one man, but in the collective work and efforts of mankind, which I thinks renders the idea or intellectual property moot. We overrate the creation of something new as a miracle when it is just a reorganization of existing ideas. It is because of that, I believe that culture, and software like music or literature, parts of culture should always be free. And I despise the argument that some places are lawless and therefore you need encryption and DRM. Those places you are probably thinking of are the one more in need of free culture. Poor third world countries. I think that the hardest part is that we are immersed in a system that would have as believe otherwise. I, for one, do not use 100% free software stuff and admire those who do. I believe however that as professor and in an area that would never have been where is at without free software I can help by letting people k ow that for every commericial bioinformatics tool out there, there is a better open source. As for the challenge of making a living out of it and saying that there is no other choice, I feel bad if that is true, I like to think based on companies like o'reilly and others who opt for DRM free that it is possible, but those are bigger companies. Maybe the only solution is in educating the next generations. However, I think ignoring the fact that things like perl and Linux are what they are because of community not individual and therefore should be treated as so, a product of the community, is wrong. I think there is an ethical issue and choice behind this discussion which is as important as the all the more practical issues.
T. Sent from my iPhone On 2013-02-13, at 4:35 AM, "Octavian Rasnita" <orasn...@gmail.com> wrote: > From: "Shlomi Fish" <shlo...@shlomifish.org> > > > Hi all, > > On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:01:27 -0800 (PST) > Rajeev Prasad <rp.ne...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> freinds, >> >> what is the advice just for obfuscating code? platform is solaris. >> >> ty. > > thanks all for the great responses. Here is something I have written about it > in the context of using Python bytecode files (.pyc) for hiding the source, > which some people erroneously believe is an advantage of Python: > > http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/39732.html > > > > > Well, I don't agree. > > First, in some parts of the world, the recommendation of using user license > agreements or lawyers is futile, because the laws are not the same all over, > and even where the laws should be respected, they are not. > > Second, I have read for many times that it is easy to decompile a bytecode, > or to clean the obfuscated code, but I couldn't find "easy" to follow > examples about how to do that. It is true that I haven't searched on the web > for programs that can be used for this, but if someone needs to search for > such programs that might also include malware, it means that it is not an > easy task. > > So as a promotor of an open source language I can recommend to offer open > source programs, but if you need to sell the programs for living, to a public > you can't trust, respect your public, but force them to pay, because > otherwise they won't pay absolutely anything they can get for free. > > The fact that Perl doesn't have tools that make the encryption/obfuscation so > easy as for other languages is another reason for which the software > companies prefer other languages. > > A pretty good solution for hiding the source code is to package the Perl > programs using a paid application like ActiveState PDK. > For most users it would be too complicated and it would require a too big > effort to do that, so they might prefer to pay because this would be easier. > > Otherwise... for some users the payment itself may be a complicated thing, > even they will accept to give the money, so if the source code can be used > for free, it is clear that they won't pay at all. > > It would be nice if Perl would allow us to choose what programs we want to > offer as open source and which ones we want to protect as good as possible, > but in an easier way. > > Perl has other advantages. In this field it doesn't have an advantage. > > Octavian > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org > For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org > http://learn.perl.org/ > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
