How to use Webgl for commercial applications?

Question

I am evaluating a software that runs natively on Windows and OS X, and that also provides a plug-in for Firefox, IE and older versions of Safari (<5.1) on OS X for displaying files created with the software.

Obviously a part of their closed-source code is compiled and shipped with the plug-in, but not directly readable unless someone want to spend some time decompiling and reversing it. This also means that this company is stuck to the browsers for which they provide a plug-in.

So I was wondering: is there a way to target a large number of browsers and platforms, using for example HTML5 and WebGL, without revealing too much code ?

Answer 1

If you want low friction and target as many browsers as possible from one codebase, JS/HTML5 plus canvas drawing or WebGL seems like the best option. If you are worried about revealing too much, you should look for a JavaScript obfuscator.

If you already have an existing C/C++ code base, you may want to take a look at emscripten, which by default emits asm.js.