A client is asking me if is it possible to deploy a Rails application on a third-party's server in some way that even the server's administrator cannot get the application source code. May be any kind of packaging with encryption or something like that? I think it's not possible but I want to assure it to him and well, now I'm curious about this question too...
Thanks in advance for any ideas :-)
Same question as How to prevent my users to read my Ruby code?
Top answer there: jruby.
the ruby encoder looks like a viable solution, and is targeted at MRI & Rails. That would probably be my first try.
I would also guess Rubinius could be used for obfuscation, since it compiles to bytecode. I've seen it suggested for such use, but haven't seen anyone actually implement a deployment tool for such.
