[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]
I don't about Ruby2Exe, as I understand it, it's been replaced by OCRA,
which I've had good luck with. Of course, with both of them, it's not
going to be very difficult for someone with a little bit of knowledge to
extract the code. Of course even technologies built on Java or .NET are
fairly easy to reverse with a little knowledge (Or written in C for that
matter). I guess the real question is why in the world would you
release your code to a rival? Suffice it to say, if you have someone
actively trying to steal your code, there is no programming language
that will stop them. There are tools that can help make it more
difficult, but it's always possible by someone sufficiently knowledgeable.
The question of obfuscating code comes up a lot here. One of the more
reasonable desires for it is to stop a client tinkering with it, or
otherwise
control how it is updated with respect to support etc. I am sure python,
perl,Tcl mailing lists are full of this too.
Generally people are happy with packaging solutions, where the source is
not sitting on the file system and so cannot be tinkered with and repackaged
easily. JRuby offers a few options here with Rawr possibly, and Warbler
allows
you to create self contained Rails apps that are indistinguishable from
regular
java WAR files. Crate is another packaging solution that I have heard of
that
may be useful.
Once you are distributing your code, these options will only hide your code
from casual snooping. A determined individual will be able to unpackage the
application, inspect the code and repackage it. Signing the package may
provide some options to help you control this problem, but it wont hide
your source.
As to why Ruby source is being singled out in this case I don't know. Aytug,
if your employer takes a hard line on this, my sympathies. My experience on
this
is that naive false assumptions on how 'protected' the source is by language
can only rarely be undone. Its usually an emotive problem.
regards,
Richard