Python Portability--Not very portable?

[geremy condra]

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