security - Protecting Java jar Files for Distribution

Question

I'm working on an application that I will soon be publicly distributing. I would like to do anything in my power to make sure those who download my program do not reverse engineer it. I understand that distributing a .jar file is highly insecure.

Can anyone recommend a platform independent way to distribute my Java application? Also, I would like to install it as a service on any platform (Windows, Linux, Mac OSX).

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can scramble / obfuscate your bytecode with yGuard or other java-bytecode-obfuscators.

Operating System independent distribution can be difficult. IMHO the best solution is a normal archive containing several scripts (.bat/.cmd for windows, .sh for linux / OSX)for the program-start under the Operating Systems the program supports.

Running a java-program as service can be even more difficult: It's easy under Linux, where you just have to write a proper startup-script to run it in the background. I know that FireDaemon has problems running java-programs as service, so it might be difficult (or impossible) to run it as service on Windows. Sorry, but I've no idea about MacOS X. Could be as easy as Linux, could be as impossible as Windows.