Does anyone know of any tool(s) to obfuscate [ksh] shell scripts for intellectual property protection purposes?
My searches turned up one such tool for Perl but not for shell scripts. Thanks.
Shell scripts are not the right computer language to use if you need or require intellecture property (IP) protection. For this, you must use a compiled language such as C and distribute binaries.
Intellectual property protection is a cornerstone of the software industry. Under the laws of a democratic and commerce based society, people have rights to produce and freely distribute software or to develop and maintain intellectual property rights, BTW.
My advise is that you must use a compiled language, such as C, if you have IP requirements (and secure your source code).
ksh93 as distributed by AT&T comes with "shcomp", a program that can compile a ksh script. The compiled script can then be read and executed by ksh93. I have just tried it and it works. The compiled script certainly seems obfuscated. Click on the download link on the Korn Shell page if you want to download the ksh93 package.