[Python-Dev] LSB: pyc stability

[Brett Cannon]

On 12/4/06, Neil Toronto <ntoronto at cs.byu.edu> wrote:
>
> Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> > Brett Cannon schrieb:
> >
> >> Did they say why they wanted to distribute  bytecode files?  I assume
> it
> >> is either for space considerations or they think it will help to
> protect
> >> their IP somehow.
> >>
> >
> > It's to protect the IP (i.e. for proprietary software). They are aware
> > of decompyle, but still consider byte-code only distribution of their
> > code necessary for protection.
>
> It sounds like a trade secret issue. You have to take reasonable
> measures to protect trade secrets in order for them to be legally
> recognized as such. I wouldn't be surprised if compiling to bytecode
> counts. There are similar provisions in copyright due to the DMCA (which
> seems to require nothing stronger than, say, ROT26), but I don't think
> this is the right context for that.
>
> Space considerations shouldn't be much of an issue, since you can (and
> should in many cases) distribute your code in a ZIP file, and code
> compresses quite well. Can Python import modules from encrypted ZIP
> files? That'd be an interesting way to protect a trade secret, and
> probably safer (in the courts) than distributing bytecode.


No.  Part of the issue is there is no way to syntactically support entering
the password to decrypt the zip file.  One solution, though, would be to
write an importer/loader object for zip files that was instantiated with a
password and that could then handle the decryption.

-Brett
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