Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 20:59:57 -0400, Bart Willems wrote: Or the consultant wants to be sure that the two dimwitted nimcumpoops at the office who /think/ they can write code don't screw up the script when they're trying to 'fix' or 'improve' something. And blame the consultant if the script all of a sudden stops working 'we did not do anything. It just stopped working all of a sudden'. Or he doesn't want to expose the passwords needed to logon to the database server. Or whatever. So, there are reasons enough why someone wants to render his code immutable and/or unreadable *to some extent*. And that's what I've been asking. How to protect the code depends on what you are trying to protect it from. Why is that so hard to understand? In the above scenarios, one solution is: chmod a-w script.py If they don't have write permission, they can't improve it by adding bugs. If they take the time and effort to give themselves write permission, then they have accepted responsibility for breaking it. The OP clearly states that he does not want a discussion as to why to protect the code. The OP might not want such a discussion, but without it, any answers he gets are sure to be bad answers except by accident. All he wants is something that turns 'readable, changeable python' into 'unreadable, immutable python'. chown scriptuser script.py # a unique user chmod a-rwx script.py chmod u+rx script.py I believe that fully meets the functional requirements. Where shall I send the invoice? -- Steven D'Aprano -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
I didn´t reply to the last D´Aprano reply just to avoid this kind of social war. And yes, I know that if I want 100% security I should not distribute my code. And there is a better way that is not doing any code to be more secure and bug-free (now I am using irony). And no, I am not supporter of software patents, RIAA and DRM. And Mr. Willems understood very well my problem and my condition. And others too in the beginning of the post. But look...after mr D´Aprano enters it starts this social warfare. So where is the troll? In fact I think the heroes series was based in this thread (Hiros read it and come back in time) Because there is some people who have special DNAs that give powers to see beyond their problems and environments, so they can read the post, understand and give technical details, understanding this is not comp.lang.python.social-activism-political-be-open-not-evil About trolls: No way I will do this question only to say to others: Look python can´t do this like does.. or Look now I will active the pet-people-living-in-welfare-trying-to-be- political in the list and they will join and sing songs about the revolution.. if you do a search in this group for this problem you will see more political whining than answers in this type of questions... Just look this post!! Seriously read one by one Begining ok.. 2 ok ,3 ok , 4 ok .. and bang..!!! Going back in the beginning I said : So PLEASE, don't try to convince me about the social / economical / open source / give to all / be open / all people are honest until prove contrary / dance with the rabbits... So who is failing to acknowledge the question? AND AGAIN someone will search for protecting python code and will see the same whining and political threads... I think the python community is great, and I love the python language, if you search for superflit in this group you will see that I love python and the community, I am a newbie, but I am not imposing my beliefs I am just saying that my reality is a little different and I need a answer for a particular problem. That is the reason because I always recommend people to travel out of their CONTINENT, and stay more than 5 months living in another culture. I can elaborate a more intelectual answer but sorry. I have to work at 6:00 am to pay my bills, and if I get unemployed there is no welfare, nothing , nada, zero. I believe in reincarnation, so next time I will aim better :) For me this thread is closed, and I think this is the most crazy thread in this list. Thank you all, for the technical answers, and sorry if I insult anyone directly or indirectly ( I am a political incorrect person) That´s all folks..finito -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:59:46 -0700, flit wrote: Going back in the beginning I said : So PLEASE, don't try to convince me about the social / economical / open source / give to all / be open / all people are honest until prove contrary / dance with the rabbits... I have done NONE of that. I've just pointed out, time and time again, that you haven't asked a meaningful question. Even after all these posts, still won't tell us what you are trying to protect against. People copying your program? Competitors infringing your patents? Your corrupt and bad government (your words) infringing your moral rights as an author? Your customer editing your program and breaking it? Who knows? I don't. I wonder whether even you do. You keep asking for a technical solution, even if a technical solution is not appropriate, but you won't tell us what the problem is. Tell us the threat you want to protect against, and we'll suggest meaningful solutions. -- Steven D'Aprano -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:11:51 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Steven D'Aprano [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Is your program valuable? Is it worth money? Then the 90% of script kiddies will just wait three days, and download the program off the Internet after the real hackers have broken your protection. The real hackers wouldn't be doing that. The crackers, however, might. I quote Bruce Schneier: [quote] For years I have refused to play the semantic hacker vs. cracker game. There are good hackers and bad hackers, just as there are good electricians and bad electricians. Hacker is a mindset and a skill set; what you do with it is a different issue. [end quote] See his essay on What is a hacker here: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/what_is_a_hacke.html In addition, virtually nobody outside of the IT hacker subculture knows what you're talking about if you talk about crackers. Out network was brought down by a biscuit??? -- Steven D'Aprano -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
Bart Willems schrieb: Aaah, *now* we're getting somewhere... :-) All he wants is something that turns 'readable, changeable python' into 'unreadable, immutable python'. chown scriptuser script.py # a unique user chmod a-rwx script.py chmod u+rx script.py I believe that fully meets the functional requirements. Where shall I send the invoice? If it works on the target machine - I am under the assumption that the client is some kind of government office - more likely to run Windows than it is to run unix/linux/etc. Who has a similar solution for windows? python -m py_compile script.py del script.py Thomas -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
Aaah, *now* we're getting somewhere... :-) All he wants is something that turns 'readable, changeable python' into 'unreadable, immutable python'. chown scriptuser script.py # a unique user chmod a-rwx script.py chmod u+rx script.py I believe that fully meets the functional requirements. Where shall I send the invoice? If it works on the target machine - I am under the assumption that the client is some kind of government office - more likely to run Windows than it is to run unix/linux/etc. Who has a similar solution for windows? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
En Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:04:04 -0300, Bart Willems [EMAIL PROTECTED] escribió: chown scriptuser script.py # a unique user chmod a-rwx script.py chmod u+rx script.py If it works on the target machine - I am under the assumption that the client is some kind of government office - more likely to run Windows than it is to run unix/linux/etc. Who has a similar solution for windows? cacls /help -- Gabriel Genellina -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
flit wrote: 1 - There is a way to make some program in python and protects it? I am not talking about ultra hard-core protection, just a simple one that will stop 90% script kiddies. Put it in an executable? It's more hidden than protected, but it will stop a fair few non-experts. I use and have been happy with pyinstaller, though there are other options. I use it more for ease of distribution to non-techy users, but it's also a simply way to hide your code. 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? Configure your web-server properly and it will never serve up the .py files, only the results generated by them. I've not done it with Python, but I have set up a similar thing with Apache and XSLT where it will only give the generated data, not the code which created it. This is true even if there's an error in the code - it will just give HTTP 500 Internal Server Error and dump something a bit more useful to its error log. -- I'm at CAMbridge, not SPAMbridge -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
flit wrote: Hello All, I have a hard question, every time I look for this answer its get out from the technical domain and goes on in the moral/social domain. First, I live in third world with bad gov., bad education, bad police and a lot of taxes and bills to pay, and yes I live in a democratic state (corrupt, but democratic). So please, don't try to convince me about the social / economical / open source / give to all / be open / all people are honest until prove contrary / dance with the rabbits... Remember I need to pay bills and security. Now the technical question: Most of these discussions aren't about open source or moral, but exactly about what you ask - technicalities. A friend of mine is so f**ing fluent with a disassembler, he immediately has whatever amount of credits he wants in your usual simulation style game. It's just a question of if the hurdles you put up are high enough for you intended audience - and for some reason people feel that compiled code would be much more safe. It's not. Unless very special measures are taken (e.g. skype), but that then is also beyond the common C-compiler run. And what almost always is not a point is that you've programmed something that would be interesting for outher to rip apart and use in pieces. Sorry, but 99% of all code is just a bit of glue logic - and the reluctance of developers to even use explicitly bought and well-documented libraries instead of rolling out their own, customized solution illustrates that adjusting your mindset to that of somebody else is much more of a problem than actually writing amounts of - mostly trivial - code. The only _real_ interesting thing is copy-protection. But that's a problem for all, also the compiler-camp-buddies. 1 - There is a way to make some program in python and protects it? I am not talking about ultra hard-core protection, just a simple one that will stop 90% script kiddies. If you can, just deliver the pyc-files. Should be hard enough for most people. 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? A service doesn't expose those files, unless you somehow instruct it to do so. Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
On Mar 21, 2:36 pm, flit [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now the technical question: 1 - There is a way to make some program in python and protects it? I am not talking about ultra hard-core protection, just a simple one that will stop 90% script kiddies. Freeze. That should be hard enough for 99% of users. 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? That's more of a question about the security of that particular server. Normally if the server is well set up, there is no way that unauthorized user could access source code form outside. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 06:36 -0700, flit wrote: Hello All, I have a hard question, every time I look for this answer its get out from the technical domain and goes on in the moral/social domain. First, I live in third world with bad gov., bad education, bad police and a lot of taxes and bills to pay, and yes I live in a democratic state (corrupt, but democratic). So please, don't try to convince me about the social / economical / open source / give to all / be open / all people are honest until prove contrary / dance with the rabbits... Remember I need to pay bills and security. Developing open-source code and getting paid are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but I digress... Now the technical question: 1 - There is a way to make some program in python and protects it? I am not talking about ultra hard-core protection, just a simple one that will stop 90% script kiddies. Not providing .py files and instead only providing .pyc files is perfectly viable, really easy to do, and provides adequate protection against casual/accidental code inspection. A sufficiently determined person will be able to retrieve the source code, but that is also true for any other imaginable protection scheme. In order for the user's computer to execute your code, you have to give the user's computer your code. Once that happens it's only a question of how determined you are to obfuscate the code and how determined they are to break your obfuscation. 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? Providing the code as a service instead means that you don't have to give the user your code, since the code runs on your hardware. As long as the server is properly configured, it will never serve the source code. You would still have to worry about malicious users trying to gain unauthorized root access to your server, and then they can do whatever they want, including looking at your super secret and super valuable code. It all comes back down to the question of how determined you are to protect your code and how determined your users are to break into it. -Carsten -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:36:16 -0700, flit wrote: 1 - There is a way to make some program in python and protects it? I am not talking about ultra hard-core protection, just a simple one that will stop 90% script kiddies. Protect it from what? Viruses? Terrorists? The corrupt government? Your ex-wife cutting it up with scissors? People who want to copy it? People who will look at your code and laugh at you for being a bad programmer? Until you tell us what you are trying to protect against, your question is meaningless. Is your program valuable? Is it worth money? Then the 90% of script kiddies will just wait three days, and download the program off the Internet after the real hackers have broken your protection. If it is NOT valuable, then why on earth do you think people will put up with whatever protection you use? Why won't they just use another program? 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? Don't make the .py files available on the web server. [penny drops] Hang on, you want us to believe that you're a serious computer programmer with a seriously valuable program that's worth protecting, and you don't know that? I smell a troll. -- Steven. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
First I wanna thanks the all people who gives good contribution to this thread, thank you all.. Now I have something more to say: OK, that kind of answer is what I was trying to avoid.. On Mar 21, 1:23 pm, Steven D'Aprano [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:36:16 -0700, flit wrote: 1 - There is a way to make some program in python and protects it? I am not talking about ultra hard-core protection, just a simple one that will stop 90% script kiddies. Protect it from what? Viruses? Terrorists? The corrupt government? Your ex-wife cutting it up with scissors? People who want to copy it? People who will look at your code and laugh at you for being a bad programmer? Until you tell us what you are trying to protect against, your question is meaningless. In this time I supposed someone took too much coffee..But will ignore.. Is your program valuable? Is it worth money? Then the 90% of script kiddies will just wait three days, and download the program off the Internet after the real hackers have broken your protection. If it is NOT valuable, then why on earth do you think people will put up with whatever protection you use? Why won't they just use another program? It´s doesn´t matter if it is the next BIG HIT Ultra-fast-next-google thing or a programm to take control of my pet-people-living-in- welfare-trying-to-be-political It´s a technical question, If you can´t answer it ok, I will not suppose that you are it or that, it´s not a personal question or matter. 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? Don't make the .py files available on the web server. Now we have a real contribution to the thread. Thank You [penny drops] Hang on, you want us to believe that you're a serious computer programmer with a seriously valuable program that's worth protecting, and you don't know that? I smell a troll. -- Steven. Again, you don´t have to believe, suppose or think anything about me, are you capable to make any contribution? Technical one? Are you sooo good and serious programmer that you did not develop your personal skills, and thinks that winning an argument in internet is the best thing in the world? Thanks all, Flit (the-not-serious-programmer-that-wanna-to-be-a-big-capitalist-and-take- the-money-from all) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 09:56:12 -0700, flit wrote: First I wanna thanks the all people who gives good contribution to this thread, thank you all.. But they haven't. They've given answers to an ill-posed question. How can anyone tell you how to protect code when you haven't told us what you want to protect against? Until you tell us what you are trying to protect against, your question is meaningless. In this time I supposed someone took too much coffee..But will ignore.. That is the absolute core of the problem. What are you trying to protect against? If you can't even answer that question, then how do you expect to find a solution? If a customer came to you and offered you money to protect this data, what would you do? Surely the FIRST thing you would need to do is find out, protect it from what? What problem does the customer want you to solve? Does the customer want error correction codes so he can transmit it over a noisy data channel? Does the customer just want an off-site backup he can take home? Does he want it encrypted? Or does he just want it copyrighted, so it is legally protected? Or does he want you to go out and hire a big strong man with a club to stand over the disk and hit people on the head if they get too close? Is your program valuable? Is it worth money? Then the 90% of script kiddies will just wait three days, and download the program off the Internet after the real hackers have broken your protection. If it is NOT valuable, then why on earth do you think people will put up with whatever protection you use? Why won't they just use another program? It´s doesn´t matter if it is the next BIG HIT Ultra-fast-next-google thing or a programm to take control of my pet-people-living-in- welfare-trying-to-be-political It´s a technical question, No it isn't. You only think it is a technical question. You said it yourself: you have to make money. How much money are you going to make if you spend all your time solving the technical question of protecting your software, if nobody wants your software? What is the value of the protection? Should you spend a thousand hours protecting it, or a hundred hours, or ten, or one, or one minute, or nothing at all? What's your business model for making money? That is far more important than whether you can send out a .pyc file or how many people know how to use the Python disassembler. Maybe you'll make MORE money by giving the software away for free and charging for services. Would you rather sell ten copies of your software at $20 each, or give away ten thousand copies and charge five hours of consulting services at $100 an hour? The technical problem is the LEAST important part of the real problem, which is how do I make money from this?. -- Steven. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
On Mar 21, 8:36 am, flit [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello All, I have a hard question, every time I look for this answer its get out from the technical domain and goes on in the moral/social domain. First, I live in third world with bad gov., bad education, bad police and a lot of taxes and bills to pay, and yes I live in a democratic state (corrupt, but democratic). So please, don't try to convince me about the social / economical / open source / give to all / be open / all people are honest until prove contrary / dance with the rabbits... Remember I need to pay bills and security. Now the technical question: 1 - There is a way to make some program in python and protects it? I am not talking about ultra hard-core protection, just a simple one that will stop 90% script kiddies. 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? Thanks and sorry for the introduction Maybe an application for php. Then any html visible is not source but result of execution of php. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 11:33 -0700, gtb wrote: On Mar 21, 8:36 am, flit [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? Maybe an application for php. Then any html visible is not source but result of execution of php. How is that different from HTML output that's generated by a Python script? -Carsten -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
gtb a écrit : On Mar 21, 8:36 am, flit [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (snip) 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? Thanks and sorry for the introduction Maybe an application for php. Then any html visible is not source but result of execution of php. Why would you want to use php ??? Python is far better for web development than php will ever be. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
flit a écrit : First I wanna thanks the all people who gives good contribution to this thread, thank you all.. Now I have something more to say: OK, that kind of answer is what I was trying to avoid.. (snip half-angry answers to Steven) Flit, whether you like the way Steven expresses itself or not, I think you should get over the tone and pay attention to *what* he actually says. As a side note, and from a purely technical POV, the most reliable protection is to *not* distribute the code. IOW, make your app (or the critical parts of it) a web service. This is not an absolute protection, but that's the best you can get AFAICT. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
Steven D'Aprano [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Is your program valuable? Is it worth money? Then the 90% of script kiddies will just wait three days, and download the program off the Internet after the real hackers have broken your protection. The real hackers wouldn't be doing that. The crackers, however, might. -- \ Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a | `\man of value. -- Albert Einstein | _o__) | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
flit wrote: OK, that kind of answer is what I was trying to avoid.. Perhaps, but it's possible that people get tired of answering the same questions over and over again. A search in comp.lang.python for protect source code will provide lots of answers, some as purely technical as you desire. On Mar 21, 1:23 pm, Steven D'Aprano [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:36:16 -0700, flit wrote: 1 - There is a way to make some program in python and protects it? I am not talking about ultra hard-core protection, just a simple one that will stop 90% script kiddies. Protect it from what? Viruses? Terrorists? The corrupt government? Your ex-wife cutting it up with scissors? People who want to copy it? People who will look at your code and laugh at you for being a bad programmer? Until you tell us what you are trying to protect against, your question is meaningless. In this time I supposed someone took too much coffee..But will ignore.. I think Mr D'Aprano seeks too much clarification for what would appear to be a question that would be satisfied by a fire and forget response, in that people telling you the usual things (distribute bytecode, make an executable, deploy a Web service) and leaving you to figure it out yourself would be sufficient, especially from my perspective since I view binary-only software rather dimly having had to work with it (or mostly around it) fairly often in previous corporate environments. However, in choosing to ignore what he has to say (although you've made a bad job of actually ignoring it) you lose out on some good insights. Is your program valuable? Is it worth money? Then the 90% of script kiddies will just wait three days, and download the program off the Internet after the real hackers have broken your protection. If it is NOT valuable, then why on earth do you think people will put up with whatever protection you use? Why won't they just use another program? It´s doesn´t matter if it is the next BIG HIT Ultra-fast-next-google thing or a programm to take control of my pet-people-living-in- welfare-trying-to-be-political It´s a technical question, If you can´t answer it ok, I will not suppose that you are it or that, it´s not a personal question or matter. No, but as was pointed out, if you make something valuable enough and apply complicated enough technology to protect it, you spend your way into becoming a top ten target for people who will unprotect it in every sense. So it's a social and an economic matter as well as an ethical and a technical one. Don't agree? You should read the paper about reverse engineering Skype - the effort used Python, by the way - and that was done ostensibly for network management purposes, although lots of people would quite happily leverage that kind of work for other purposes. Sure, most people won't care about your program enough to do anything more than run a decompiler on it (either a Python bytecode one or a machine code one), and that might be too sophisticated for your users, but it's a tradeoff defined in terms of who your users are and what the reward might be for them in getting access to your secrets. 2 - If I put the code in web like a web service, how can I protect my code from being ripped? There is a way to avoid someone using my site and ripping the .py files? Don't make the .py files available on the web server. Now we have a real contribution to the thread. Thank You It was surely the answer all along. Software as a service, you know? [penny drops] Hang on, you want us to believe that you're a serious computer programmer with a seriously valuable program that's worth protecting, and you don't know that? I smell a troll. [...] Again, you don´t have to believe, suppose or think anything about me, are you capable to make any contribution? Technical one? Are you sooo good and serious programmer that you did not develop your personal skills, and thinks that winning an argument in internet is the best thing in the world? If the advice to not distribute your code - instead offering the software as a service - was genuinely enlightening to you then I think Mr D'Aprano has made quite a contribution that you fail to acknowledge. If the enlightenment is merely for show, expressing shock that Python programs can't be protected when they're distributed, then stopping short of using the T word (as in the word used by Mr D'Aprano above) I'd say that you should acquaint yourself with copy protection and DRM mechanisms as well as the phenomenon that is Trusted (a.k.a. Treacherous) Computing, then apply that knowledge to any other favourite platforms and tools you may have. Paul P.S. I suppose sarcasm is a natural response when someone feels like they're being lectured to, but you could pay good money and not get advice as comprehensive as this. Still, I suppose it beats people thinking that software patents are somehow cool tools of
Re: Technical Answer - Protecting code in python
Steven D'Aprano wrote: Protect it from what? Viruses? Terrorists? The corrupt government? Your ex-wife cutting it up with scissors? People who want to copy it? People who will look at your code and laugh at you for being a bad programmer? Until you tell us what you are trying to protect against, your question is meaningless. Is your program valuable? Is it worth money? Then the 90% of script kiddies will just wait three days, and download the program off the Internet after the real hackers have broken your protection. If it is NOT valuable, then why on earth do you think people will put up with whatever protection you use? Why won't they just use another program? Some of us live in a world where consultants get paid for the work they do /by clients/. That work might be delivering the solution to some kind of problem. Whatever that problem is, a Python script can apparently solve it. Just to give a few ideas: grabbing data from a web server, converting output from system x in such a way that it can be used by system y, etc. Now - and I know this will take a enormous leap of imagination, but try! try! - imagine that whatever the original problem was, it has changed. Maybe server x has changed into server z. Maybe the web page that we're pulling data from has a different format now. We don't know. The consultant will leave a program that is of course highly configurable so that the client can make simple changes him/herself. He has to, as his clients will stop doing business if they have to call him for every fart they let out. However, there can also be more complex cases. What the consultant wants is that the client will call HIM to fix the problem, not the director's nephew who took two weeks of classes. Or the consultant wants to be sure that the two dimwitted nimcumpoops at the office who /think/ they can write code don't screw up the script when they're trying to 'fix' or 'improve' something. And blame the consultant if the script all of a sudden stops working 'we did not do anything. It just stopped working all of a sudden'. Or he doesn't want to expose the passwords needed to logon to the database server. Or whatever. So, there are reasons enough why someone wants to render his code immutable and/or unreadable *to some extent*. He doesn't have to fear reverse engineering by decompiling assembly code. If the 'hacker' can do that, he can probably put the whole script together. The consultant's problem are the people who shouldn't be touching or reading the script because they have no clue what they are doing and want to 'help' anyway. The OP clearly states that he does not want a discussion as to why to protect the code. All he wants is something that turns 'readable, changeable python' into 'unreadable, immutable python'. Yes, there are ways to get around it, but that is not his 'target audience' for the 'protection'. Yes, I do smell a troll, but not in the original mail. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
