Best way to protect plugins code

[TobyLai]

I have created a C# plugins using RhinoCommon.

What is the best way to protect the code as I am planning to allow some other contractor to use my plugins, but I am worry about the contractors will take the plugins to our competition.

[tay.othman (tay.0)]

Is compiling the code can be an option?

[Tom_P]

check this topic

How to monetise a plug-in with external licensing and shop solution

@dale for me it would be great, if McNeel could do a recommendation. maybe together with another company that is specialised in licence selling / software protection solutions. …some kind of example would be fantastic “make some little money and deploy your first plug-in with a licence”. … but some simple recommendation “check the offer from”… and some starting points … put the ///code her the ///code there…would also be enough. Thanks.

to more or less protect your code → obfuscation
to make it run only on selected machines → licensing

if you find a nice solution - let me know, i am still not happy with my selfmade solution

[TobyLai]

It is compiled, decompiling are pretty smart to get pass obfuscation.

I was hoping there is a web solution maybe running the plugins from Amazon web service.

[gankeyu (Keyu Gan)]

There’s no 100% bulletproof solution of protecting a C# plugin. The difficulty to bypass any obfuscation on the market varies from being very easy to moderate.

If it’s really important, I would move core code onto any web platform. A slightly better (and offline) way would be moving core code into native code, eg C++, and protect it with heavy-duty tools like VMProtect.

In most circumstances I won’t care about the issue. All my plugins are just plain and easy to decompile.

[stevebaer]

If your concern is about competitors using your plug-in then licensing sounds like where you need to focus as @Tom_ points out. Decompiling protection is only useful if you think someone is interested in stealing your code.