How to protect python code ?

[christophe grimault]

Hello,

Before trying my own solutions, I wonder if someone already has a 
solution to this.
We have been programming a quite large application in python and it 
contains many
original algorithm and other things. The application will be sent to 
customers in a few
month and since it is a commercial app, we need some protection against 
copy (illegal
copies) and we need to make sure that critical parts of the code cannot 
be viewed and studied.

One way is to deliver only .pyc files, but I guess this is quite a poor 
protection, uh ?

An other way is to move some parts to a C API ext module and deliver 
only the .so,
but this is quite time consuming ...

Does someone has a mean to do this, knowing that we don't seek absolute 
protection, but
something that discourages people that will just "try a little"

Thanks in advance