Selling Pine Script as a binary is planned

The plan: compile your PineScript v6 to a native .so library, let buyers run it on their own data without seeing your source, and set the license limits yourself. None of it is built yet.

The problem with selling a Pine strategy today is that Pine is source. If you hand someone a .pine file, you have handed over everything: the logic, the parameters, the edge. Nothing stops the buyer from modifying it, reselling it or posting it. TradingView can hide a published script’s source (protected and invite-only scripts), but the script then runs only on TradingView.

MetaQuotes took the compiled route for MQL5. On the MQL5 Market, you sell an .ex5 binary: the buyer downloads a compiled file and runs it in MetaTrader against their account, without the source. The license is tied to the buyer’s machines, with a number of activations the seller sets, and the marketplace handles delivery and payment.

PineForge plans to apply the same model to Pine: your strategy is transpiled to C++ and compiled to a .so shared library, which is what you would distribute. Buyers would run it with the PineForge runtime on their own data, and the runtime would check the license before it runs. No license server exists yet.

Transpiling and compiling already run locally today (the pineforge-release image), so your source would never need to leave your machine. A compiled library is native machine code: much harder to read than Pine, though a determined engineer can still reverse-engineer its logic.

The MQL5 Market has run this model since 2011. PineForge would be the infrastructure for the same model in Pine.

In the plan, you define the license when you publish a strategy, and the runtime enforces it. Six limits:

Time-bound.

The license expires on a date, for example a monthly subscription renewed on payment.

Machine-bound.

The license is tied to one machine; moving it to another needs your approval.

Broker-bound.

The license runs only on data from the brokers or exchanges you name.

Symbol-bound.

The license runs only on the symbols and timeframes you allow, so a strategy built for BTC-USD on 1h is not judged on other markets.

Input-range-bound.

Buyers can tune inputs only within the ranges you allow, so your exact parameters stay private.

Revoke-anytime.

You can revoke a license, for example after a chargeback; the next license check fails and the strategy stops running.

For the plan in brief, see the /sell page.

To be direct: the marketplace (browse, buy, subscribe, rate, dispute) is planned and has no launch date. What it needs, a license server, seller tools and payments, does not exist yet.

Where things stand:

• Today: compile locally. The pineforge-release image transpiles and compiles any supported Pine v6 strategy on your machine. That part of the pipeline is real.
• Planned: licensing. License issuance, and license checks in the runtime.
• Planned: the marketplace. Discovery, payments, ratings and parity reports for listed strategies.

If you sell strategies to an audience today and want this, join the seller waitlist; it tells us who to talk to first.