Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Languages

Larry Edington wrote:

> That has been eased. It's not as restrictive exporting
> encryption technology as it used to be.

But there are still some issues that I'd rather not even come close to.

> Encryption will not completely protect your code. But it will
> make it more difficult. First rule of software development is there
> is no way to keep a hacker out if they want in. But you can sure
> make it harder for them.

What I'm saying is that it will be a heck of a lot better than none.

> Americans are but a small percentage of the people that could
> pirate your software.

True.

> I believe you are correct in the assumption ( and that's all it is )
> that X% of whoever doesn't do whatever. There is no way to accurately
> determine the percentage of US people or companies using pirated
> software. I don't care what statistics you can find, there is no
> accurate way to determine this. Statistics are used to promote a point
> of the people that paid for the study.

But understand the statistics I am using are from the Software Business
Alliance (SBA) -- which means they could be considered the "worst case
scenario." I actually believe they pad their statistics way too much,
and the piracy rate is far less in the US.

> I am however very concerned about what happens outside of the US
> where lawyers are largely ineffective.

Then that is understandable.

> I also know, that here is an "army of hackers" 'out there'
> hacking and cracking software.

The great majority of hackers are "white" and "grey hat hackers." As
you get more specialized in your software, there are fewer and fewer
"black hat hackers" that would take an interest.

> Then you aren't looking in the right places.

Maybe not. I'm a purely "white hat hacker."

> There is NO real security. Anything you write, I can get to with
> an ICE. Simple as that. Somewhere, the 'check' will be done and
> with an ICE I can get to that code 'in the clear'.

A two-key handshake makes it a little harder -- especially when the
functions are encrypted themselves and you are using a manually entered
key for an system-specific, generated seed.

> But, the point is, don't distribute code that has a big neon
> sign showing where your secrets are!

Could you give me an example of these "secrets"? And, BTW, although I
don't totally agree with most software patents, you can patent them.
That's another avenue which has worked even in the GPL/OSS space (e.g.,
FSMLabs RTLinux).

> Hobbiest and beginning commercial programmers won't usually know
> this.

Well, there are a lot of things they won't know at the same time.

> They also will have the assumptions that once their source is
> compiled it's protected.

Which is the utmost navity. The Windows developers who got caught
red-handed ripping off the GPL licensed Everybuddy program learned that
first hand.

> My point was simply to point out that using Delphi or C++
> Builder, their code was open to the world a lot more than
> the same code compiled with MSVC++ or other compilers.

Okay, okay, I see your point. Thanx for the informative post.
Sometimes I get on a "kick" that I forget the original, informational
post. My appologies. ;-PPP

-- TheBS

--
Bryan "TheBS" Smith mailto:b.j.smith@... chat:thebs413
Engineer AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc. http://www.linux-wlan.org
President SmithConcepts, Inc. http://www.SmithConcepts.com