Creating a Signature for example files

[MBK]

First off: I believe if this is possible and easy to do then more people would leave their examples and demos as open source because they would know their work would be safe from people who steal the credit for it.

If you could create a signature inside a .gam file for example that Can NOT be removed (at least not easily) so the maker of the piece could claim the credit and only them, then that would be nice. Even if it would need to be a .exe (that automatically runs when the .gam is opened) within the .gam file or something odd like that. (I don't even know if that's possible) And it would need to be "chained" to the .gam file somehow (or perhaps just encrypted really well) so they can't just remove the signature file.

If there already is a way to include an unremovable signature easily then someone please let me know.

If not, then it would be nice if someone would create an extension for doing this.

My goal is to have more example files available that I can look at and learn from that are actually nice or at least decent and useful without having to scour the known universe hunting through piles of rubbish before finding something that I can actually use and learn how to do.

[the_raven]

Basically a good idea to encourage people to spread around their ideas instead of keeping
them for themselves. But what keeps 'thieves' from just copying the events to their own
application and giving not credit as before?
I'm not trying to blast this idea. It would really be great to have something like this.
To make this work the signature would have to be implemented into every single event.
And even then a 'thief' could just rebuild them in his own app. Really not an easy task...
But I would welcome such a feature!

I know I would share more of my code if I knew it would not just be 'stolen'. Especially
because I mostly work on commercial projects.

[Sphax]

This idea is just a dream because it's impossible to do that.

A MMF2 patch will never do that because it will never be securized (a user will copy event by event the example if he want to not credit author).

An extension can't do that at all.

Not a bad idea, just a dream which can't be realized. <img src="/center/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

[joewski]

Thats not true VirtuaCLIK.

Top end Cad packages like Ideas &amp; Unigraphics record every single machine that has come in contact with a file (as well as every single edit). If you try and modify the file it basically refuses to load. You can't hex edit these cad files.

I think it works on the basis of a hash signature that is added to the file.

So what happens is every single edit is recorded. When the session finishes all the edits are recorded as well as the licence number of the cad package, who edited it and at what time.

The drawback of this method is that the files tend to grow over time.
In the Cad community they don't care because they want traceability and reversibility. So HD space isn't an issue. It just a cost of doing business.

So it is possible. But I agree with you its not practical for what we do. So it is a dream.

[Hazard]

Not useful IMHO. Would take too much efforts to implement and the result won't be so very needed, as most clickers are nice enough to credit the authors of examples.

[jayklik]

Most clickers ON CLICK SITES . Personally, I think this would be great