[REBOL] Re: Selling REBOL scripts
From: sunandadh:aol at: 8-Jan-2002 10:12
Hi Petr,
> I don't want to sound negative, but what do you need Encap for? Noone will
> use your
> script in enterprise if license doesn't allow it. So - what is Encap good
> for?
I don't want Encap as such. I want the ability to distribute scripts in a
secure way. By which I mean copy protected and tamper proof.
If I distribute scripts now, anyone could copy them to anyone else; and
anyone could change them.
In lots of instances both those abilities are ideals and not handicaps. And
I have given away scripts for free, and will continue to do so.
But I need the freedom to do otherwise on occasion.
I do not want to be called at 3 in the morning and told "Your system is
broken. All we did was change some colors in the source and now it says
'Syntax Error: Missing ] at end-of-script'. Come in and fix it NOW!!".
Also, if I have sold someone say 5 licences for a product, I want to make
reasonably sure that they are not overly abusing that limit.
And again, if part of my code is some sort of security routine, I do not want
that source exposed to anyone.
I've gone to some efforts to ensure my scripts are relatively tamper proof,
including a bit of obsfucation and some checksumming. But it'd be nice to
have a standard "core" way of distributing such scripts.
Encap isn't that way. The licensing is too restrictive (as I understand it),
and buying Encap is too expensive for what I want to do.
So, for all these reasons, I'd like to see some mechanism within Rebol for
the secure distribution of scripts. Encap is almost it. So, as I write
before, if RT can tweak Encap to meet the needs of the market, the rebolution
could come earlier.
Sunanda.