Building apps with closed source dependencies

[dmjones]

Use case

A start-up has patented a cunning new way of compressing data and has developed a Flutter package that implements it.

They want to sell copies of this library to Flutter app developers who value this capability. They don't want to release the source code publicly (to pub.dev), because they consider the contents to include proprietary information. They realise reverse engineering can eventually unpick everything, but they would still prefer to ship a closed-source library.

Proposal

1. Flutter to add support for building against AOT-compiled Dart code. Perhaps this would be a new dependency source type (e.g. "native")?

dependencies:
  transmogrify:
    native: /Users/me/transmogrify.bin

2. Flutter to add support for building closed-source packages for distribution. This might be a variant of the flutter build commands, which outputs the compiled library (and any associated metadata).

[dnfield]

For part 2, you should be able to use the flutter build aar and flutter build ios-framework commands already.

For part 1, we would need some help from the Dart team, and I have some serious doubts about the viability of such a request - AFAIK the Dart compiler for the VM assumes it has access to source code, and doing what you're asking for would defeat several important features like tree shaking (and probably involve not just killing tree shaking, but including multiple copies of the same application code, e.g. all the upstream dependencies of your closed source dart package).

I would suggest that if you have a proprietary feature you want to ship, the correct way to do so is to write it in some non-Dart language and then use platform channels or dart:ffi to talk to it. Otherwise, only release your Dart package to customers that you trust not to re-distribute it (or to violate some other contractual agreement about it).

[dmjones]

Good advice, I'll close this issue as it doesn't seem sensible to consider it further.

[github-actions]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. If you are still experiencing a similar issue, please open a new bug, including the output of flutter doctor -v and a minimal reproduction of the issue.