"SK" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > Hi Nick, > > On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 10:37 PM, Nick Sabalausky <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I'm curious what you have to say about #1. But I consider #2 to be a very >> poor reason because: >> >> - There's always reverse engineering. >> - There's always obfuscation. >> - IL may even provide better reverse-engineering results than machine >> code, >> depending on the IL. >> - All the companies sinking time and money into JS and PHP middleware >> don't >> seem to have a problem with handing out their source. >> - If someone's gonna steal a product and rebrand it as their own, they >> don't >> usually need the source, and having it would probably only be of fairly >> small help, if any. >> - As a customer, the idea of spending money on a product that I can't >> service myself if/when the company goes under or loses interest makes me >> nervous. Providing their source would given them a competetive advantage. >> - Even though providing source gets in the way of effective DRM (as if >> there >> even were such a thing), DRM itself gets in the way of sales. >> - Distributing in source form makes certain things possible that wouldn't >> otherwise be, like virtual template functions (in theory, even if not in >> actual D practice). >> > > Yes, yes and yes - especially about not needing source to be a pirate. > But your perspective is not shared by many big companies shipping > software I care about. The open source movement has even turned up > the contrast in this regard for closed source companies. Without > conducting a thorough Fortune 500 survey, I will assert that shipping > source is an emotionally burdened action at the management level, and > this roadblock is avoided by "simply" running code through front end > compilation. So, just do that and move on the to next problem.
Oh right, I won't deny any of that. And that sort of situation can, unfortunately, create a faulty-but-real need to supply such things. You can't educate an MBA - but you can fleece them ;)
