protecting proprietary plugins

[Robert Dougherty]

Dear ImageJ Experts,

The software for my acoustic beamforming system (see www.youtube.com/optinav
  for sample output if you are interested)  consists of about 10  
ImageJ plugins: one for recording data, one for processing it, and  
eight or so utility plugins.  Gabriel, you'll be glad to know that the  
processing code started out at Threshold Colour.  The installation  
procedure is basically "install ImageJ, remove the contents of the  
plugins folder, put beamforming.jar into the plugins folder, start  
ImageJ, and increase the memory."   It is a little more complicated  
because the is some third party software to be installed (it is driven  
from ImageJ using AppleScript) and a hardware driver or two.  My  
question concerns securing beamforming.jar.  I know this is open  
source land, but beamforming.jar contains  algorithm trade secrets  
that I want to protect, and, in addition, I don't want it to be  
distributed to non-customers.   So far, all I do is remove the java  
files before building the .jar file.  This does nothing to prevent  
redistribution, and, as I understand it, does not protect against  
decompiling.  Is there an obvious solution?

Bob


Robert Dougherty, Ph.D.
President, OptiNav, Inc.
4176 148th Ave. NE
Redmond, WA 98052
[phone]
FAX [phone]
www.optinav.com
[hidden email]

[Marcel]

You can protect your source from decompiling with an obfuscator.

ProGuard e.g. is a free software and links (on the website) also alternatives.

http://proguard.sourceforge.net/

Best regards

Marcel

[Gabriel Landini]

On Wednesday 04 March 2009 03:37:47 Robert Dougherty wrote:

> The software for my acoustic beamforming system (see
> www.youtube.com/optinav for sample output if you are interested)

Awesome! That is really very impressive.
This could come in handy to find out who is chatting during my lectures :-)

Presumably one can also apply classification of different types of sound, so
one finds a predetermined type?

Regards

Gabriel

[Hugo A. M. Torres]

The military could use this tool to spot snipers when their rifles are
not silenced. =]

On Tue, 2009-03-03 at 19:37 -0800, Robert Dougherty wrote:

> Dear ImageJ Experts,
>
> The software for my acoustic beamforming system (see www.youtube.com/optinav
>   for sample output if you are interested)  consists of about 10  
> ImageJ plugins: one for recording data, one for processing it, and  
> eight or so utility plugins.  Gabriel, you'll be glad to know that the  
> processing code started out at Threshold Colour.  The installation  
> procedure is basically "install ImageJ, remove the contents of the  
> plugins folder, put beamforming.jar into the plugins folder, start  
> ImageJ, and increase the memory."   It is a little more complicated  
> because the is some third party software to be installed (it is driven  
> from ImageJ using AppleScript) and a hardware driver or two.  My  
> question concerns securing beamforming.jar.  I know this is open  
> source land, but beamforming.jar contains  algorithm trade secrets  
> that I want to protect, and, in addition, I don't want it to be  
> distributed to non-customers.   So far, all I do is remove the java  
> files before building the .jar file.  This does nothing to prevent  
> redistribution, and, as I understand it, does not protect against  
> decompiling.  Is there an obvious solution?
>
> Bob
>
>
> Robert Dougherty, Ph.D.
> President, OptiNav, Inc.
> 4176 148th Ave. NE
> Redmond, WA 98052
> [phone]
> FAX [phone]
> www.optinav.com
> [hidden email]

--
Hugo Arruda de Moura Torres
==================================
Departamento de Biofísica
Universidade Federal de São Paulo
Rua Botucatu 862 7o. andar
CEP 04023-062 Vila Clementino
São Paulo - SP - Brasil
Tel:[phone] r.220
Fax: [phone]

[Robert Dougherty]

Hugo,

Indeed, but my system is not really designed for that.  For one thing,  
post processing would not be the appropriate work flow.   BBN  
developed a system called  Boomerang a few years ago for that purpose.

Bob

On Mar 4, 2009, at 10:46 AM, Hugo A. M. Torres wrote:

> The military could use this tool to spot snipers when their rifles are
> not silenced. =]
>
> --
> Hugo Arruda de Moura Torres
> ==================================
> Departamento de Biofísica
> Universidade Federal de São Paulo
> Rua Botucatu 862 7o. andar
> CEP 04023-062 Vila Clementino
> São Paulo - SP - Brasil
> Tel:[phone] r.220
> Fax: [phone]

Robert Dougherty, Ph.D.
President, OptiNav, Inc.
4176 148th Ave. NE
Redmond, WA 98052
[phone]
FAX [phone]
www.optinav.com
[hidden email]