Python Portability--Not very portable?

[W. eWatson]

On 8/6/2010 10:31 AM, geremy condra wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 8:00 AM, W. eWatson<wolftracks at invalid.com>  wrote:
>>
>>>> I would think there are some small time and big time Python players who
>>>> sell
>>>> executable versions of their programs for profit?
>>>
>>> Yes. What's your point?
>>
>> That someone must know how to distribute them without having the source code
>> ripped off.
>
> I've never seen a code obfuscation scheme I thought did the job the
> whole way, including compiling C, and Python bytecode is significantly
> easier to turn back into something resembling the original source
> (YMMV, I suppose). Also, if you don't know about common tools like
> distutils, the odds are pretty good that it isn't your code itself
> that is valuable to you- you're probably more interested in protecting
> your idea about what the code should do. At least for now, that's
> outside of the scope of technical solutions- discuss it with a lawyer,
> not a programmer.
>
>>>
>>>> disutils. Sounds familiar. I'm pretty sure I was using Py2Exe, and
>>>> disutils
>>>> might have been part of it.
>>>
>>> distutils.
>>>
>>> http://docs.python.org/library/distutils.html
>>
>> I don't see ;how distutils is going to solve this problem. Are you
>> suggesting the program should be packaged? Why? I can just send it to him as
>> py code. distutils looks like it's for library modules, e.g., functions like
>> math.
>
> ...no. Distutils is handy because you could just bundle your
> dependencies and hand them an easy-to-install package, which would be
> a quick way to get everybody on the same page. Of course, depending on
> the licenses those dependencies are under you might want to do even
> more talking to a lawyer than I've previously suggested before you go
> about trying to sell that bundle- I'm sure you wouldn't want to 'rip
> off' great free projects like python and numpy.
>
> Geremy Condra
Yes, code reversal programs have been around for many, many decades. Try 
one on MS Word or Adobe Acrobat. :-)

Is there a complete illustration of using disutils? Our only 
dependencies are on Python Org material. We use no commercial or 
licensed code.