PHP 5 software as a commercial product
I thought: tell me you put in thousands of man-hours and come up with a modern CMS or something like that. How do you ensure that whoever gets it from you is not pirating? I could insist that the buyer give me their URL and I use it and use it as a checksum everywhere in software, but that sounds like a weaker form of security.
Are there other methods? It would be possible to force the client to POST to my server for authentication before serving any pages, but that doesn't sound fair.
(Of course, I could insist on hosting the software myself.)
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Generally, instead of trying to find a technological solution to this problem, a legal solution is preferred. By using the legal basis of contracts and / or licensing agreements, make it unattractive for the customer to attempt to piracy or resell your software.
If your software is desirable enough, people will find a way to piracy (like Photoshop). If your client is happy with their business deal with you, then they are unlikely to change that by piracy your software.
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If you are distributing a platform, usually Zend Guard . However, this also means that it will be more difficult for your customers to add their own desired changes.
Nowadays, a lot of software is taking the SaaS route and self-organizing by the companies that produce it.
However, I would respond to the feelings of the other answers here - it is better to get people not to want to pirate your product (and not to encourage them) than to try to get people not to.
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Only provide support and updates to those who have purchased the software. It doesn't stop you from copying it, but any serious users will buy it.
Another option is to host it yourself. But at least don't choose the obfuscation path. Even that won't exactly prevent anything, but it will annoy your regular customers.
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Just ask for money.
I would suggest spending more time thinking about marketing and worrying less about code obfuscation.
One approach I like is the one used by jamroom.net. They are quite open source, provide full code to subscribers, changes / tweaks are allowed and encouraged to some extent. No effort has been spent on obfuscating the code.
They get cash with expansion, installation / maintenance / operating systems services. I don't know how well they feel. A community of respectable size seems to be built around its product. By the community, I mean both clients and third party developers. What a bonus, their Biz model even weighs in!
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As always, Joe Blow Blogger can pirate your software ... but real business clients are not going to take such a legal risk. Better, as others have said, is simply to provide quality software to your payment clients. Piracy is best dealt with through social and legal means, not technological.
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