Could other people see the source code in my own grasshopper component(developed in VS2010)?

Hi,

If developed in VS2010 and prepared as .gha. Is it possible for other people to view the source code in some reflector tools? If the answer is yes, then how to encrypt it?

Thanks!

-Jerome

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 2, 2011 at 7:09am

Hi Jerome,

they cannot see the original source code, but it is possible to decompile a .NET dll into any .NET language. Reflector.exe support multiple languages such as IL, C#, F#, VB, MC++, Delphi and Oxygene.

I'm not going to tell you how to encrypt your dlls because I've never used an encryptor and I feel the whole notion is fundamentally counter productive.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Jerome on October 2, 2011 at 8:49am

I see.

Thanks, David.

Permalink Reply by robert cervellione on October 2, 2011 at 10:49am

i completely agree with David, and i have never obfuscated any of my plugins.

but it is called obfuscation and a good cheap one is babel (www.babel.net ). a very powerful one is from the same people that make refector called SmartAssembly

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 2, 2011 at 4:23pm

Just to make my position a bit clearer, I wrote a blog post about this:

http://ieatbugsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/obfuscation-fe...

I'm not looking to convert anyone here, these are just my feelings on the matter.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Jerome on October 2, 2011 at 8:26pm

Thanks, David

I read your post and I totally agree with it. Writing better code is the only way to survive. The more and the better I write, the less the fear of being chased. The reason I raised this question is quite simple. A company hired me to write a plugin for their daily use and they are going to distribute it to their employees, but they are now in fear of that the plugin may be "leaked" to their competitors, and keeping me writing better code seems to be costly for them. That's why they asked me if it's possible to encrypt the plugin.

-Jerome

Permalink Reply by Evert Amador on October 3, 2011 at 7:20am