I've created a script that I'll be selling shortly but I have no way of protecting myself other then call back code and things like that. I'd like to keep everything open source because then the user has more freedom. Does anyone know how I can protect my assets while allowing the ability to customize it.

Edit: Oh yea. I've missed this site and I'm glad to be back.

Nothing much you can do. Callback code can be edited out, encryption denies the freedom to hack, and copyrights are worthless to some people. Bottom line is, if someone wants to pirate your software -- they will.

I'd think of perhaps encrypting a vital file used by your scripts. For example, maybe you have an init.php file that does all sorts of work -- encrypt just that file and include a call-home feature in it. If they delete it, then the script won't work.

I'll look into that thank you very much.

I was going to say release it open source, but then you can't sell it.

Not cheap, but you can go with a solution like Zend Encoder. Zend Optimizer is required to let your scripts run, but most hosts already have this installed.

You could try to write some kind of script that encodes the rest of the pages, then decodes them and evals them. This way the base source code would be encrypted, but they would be able to run.

The problem is that any type of script-based encoding still leaves the owner of the script with the ability to decode the script. Any encryption can be broken if the person is determined enough. Not the answer you were looking for, but it is the sad truth. Even a server side solution can be broken by installing a local copy of the software and learning how it works.

We've used CodeLock in the past. Seems to work very well, you can do some or all pages and you can set exipration dates, etc. Really nice software.

As for protection... I don't think anything is 100% safe. There is always someone out there that can hack things but if they can hack this, they are a pretty high level programmer who can probably write their own software rather than copying yours.

http://www.codelock.co.nz/

Just my two cents.

Jim Webster
www.idevdirect.com

I think I'm going to try codelock. Thank you very much.

Zend is the best solution, If you want it to be customizable just put everything in classes and encode those. that way people can write there own functions and call them when ever they want throughout the script