Re: How can we do business with Perl

Firstly, you seem to be confused about the meaning of the term "open source". It doesn't mean "you can see the source code". The term "open source" refers to the licence that the code is released under. An open source licence gives people the (legal) ability to alter and distribute your code. Perl is open source. Any product that you build with Perl doesn't have to be open source. Movable Type is a good example of a successful product which is built with Perl and isn't open source.

Secondly, the whole question of protecting Perl source code is addressed in the FAQ. All methods that obfuscate the code are pretty much doomed to failure. Your best approach is to make the licence terms really clear (or to make your product open source and make money on installations, training and consultancy).

--
<http://dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

Comment on Re: How can we do business with Perl

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Re^2: How can we do business with Perl by webfiend (Vicar) on Jan 11, 2007 at 22:05 UTC
Maybe shonorio could clarify, but I read that a little differently. My interpretation is that customers are asking them how to hide code via compilation or obfuscation, and the response is to use legal protection or just not worry about it by distributing code as open source, since there aren't many practical technical options and Perl isn't built to be obscured in that particular way. And I think the question is "how do people make money like this?" Again, clarification from shonorio would be good.	[reply]
Re^3: How can we do business with Perl by davorg (Chancellor) on Jan 11, 2007 at 22:31 UTC
how do people make money like this? The people at SixApart would be able to answer that better than me :-) -- <http://dave.org.uk> "The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club." -- Chip Salzenberg	[reply]
Re^4: How can we do business with Perl by webfiend (Vicar) on Jan 12, 2007 at 19:56 UTC
And Amazon, and WhitePages, and, and ... ;-)	[reply]
Re^5: How can we do business with Perl by davorg (Chancellor) on Jan 12, 2007 at 20:57 UTC


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