Including protected works in built applications - Strategies

jamesrholy · **Joined:** Tue Mar 12, 2013 5:28 pm **Posts:** 3

I can't imagine there aren't others who've run into this issue... To my surprise if I include a raw file in my project it turns up in the .app contents under the resources folder unencrypted and fully available to anyone willing to "Show Package Contents". It was not like this in the older versions of RB, as you would never find these files in the resources folder before, but using an older version is no longer an option with the way the core is built.

What are some strategies, besides simply encrypting the file, that some of you guys are using to protect your proprietary works that are included and accessed within your apps?

Thanks.

DaveS · **Posted:** Sun May 12, 2013 9:01 pm

Quote:

fully available to anyone willing to "Show Package Contents". It was not like this in the older versions of RB,

It was this way as far as I am aware.... and it is this way in almost any OSX application you have.... including RealBasic itself.

Any files (docs, graphics, textfiles, databases) that are included in a project by dragging them to the IDE are stored in the App Bundle in the exact format they existed when they were dragged in. Real Studio does not obsfucate, encrypt, or modify the file in any way... If you wish to include encrypted data, you may... but it is up to you do provide routines to encrypt/decrypt.

OSX itself includes some rather powerful file encryption routines that can be call from a SHELL command

jamesrholy · **Joined:** Tue Mar 12, 2013 5:28 pm **Posts:** 3

2007r5, which has been my long standing version of choice, definitely does not make these files external. I have apps built with this version and it keeps the files internally in the application. I was very surprised to see that strategy is no longer in use as it is much more secure.

Thanks. I'll look into the OS X file encryption. As long as it can return the data directly to the app without creating a new unencrypted file this may work.

kermit · **Joined:** Mon May 30, 2011 12:56 am **Posts:** 702

I found that a rival company set up a competing product and stole all my icons and a custom font from within my app in this way.
Im not a rich man: I cant afford to press copyright issues.
The best I could do is to send an angry email. They just sat there and ignored me.

Too late now, damage done, but I wish Id been able to put everything in an encrypted archive or similar.

jamesrholy · **Joined:** Tue Mar 12, 2013 5:28 pm **Posts:** 3

I totally understand. If I find something worthwhile I will definitely post the info here.

tomis · **Posted:** Mon May 20, 2013 8:41 pm

For protecting resources against lazy developers looking to rip off your IP, any simple encoding mechanism will do.

* Simple byte rotation would be more than sufficient. Build a list of integers 0-255, then randomize it, that's your encode/decode key. Swap bytes to encode, swap them back to decode.

* Build yourself an app to take input files and spit out encoded versions.

* Drop the encoded files into your project and they'll be be included as runtime constants. Strings.

* Build a wrapper method to decode the data and return a picture.

In rough terms:

dim p as picture = MyImageDecoder(myEncodedPic)

function MyImageDecoder(encodedData as string) as Picture{
  dim decodedData as string = MyStringDecoder(encodedData)
  return Picture.FromString(decodedData)
  }

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Including protected works in built applications - Strategies