Java Obfuscators.September 16, 2005Because of the incompatibilities between proguard 3.3 and Java 6, I decided to have a look at other obfuscators/optimizers. The authors of the first one I tried, Retro Guard seem to be clueless about the GPL.
This software is distributed under a "dual license" model:
- GNU GPL for non-commercial projects and for commercial trial integration;
- a subscription-based commercial license for commercial projects.
That is just baloney. The GPL does not impose any limitations what so ever on usage. The General Public License just says you cannot distribute GPL software as part of a commercial application. This is pretty much the same mistake that mysql made. (That is is a generous description of mysql's ill advised strategy). The reason for my decision to not look any further into retroguard however is it's lack of documentation and not the license issues. The java glossary at Mindprod.com has a lengthy list of java obfuscators/optimizers but unfortunately many of them seem vapourware. Several projects that had not been marked as vaporware were downloaded but they turned out to be unmaintained and/or undocumented. One product that does not fall into this category is yGuard. It seems a pretty good product unfortunately you need Ant to run it. I am yet to aquire a taste for formic acid. Thus it looks like I am back to square one; Proguard. I am perfectly happy with progaurd anyway. By the time java 6.0 hits the main steam proguard is sure to be compatible with it. So why did I start looking for alternatives? it's the geek in me. 
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