Securing my PHP script so other people can use it.

[altendew]

Well I am currently making a plug-in for another php script.

I am wondering how I can make this plugin contain a unique license so people can't copy it without have a license for each site.

My idea was, make a script that installs the database, but the code won't be in my script. There will be code to contact my web server asking permission, and I will check the HTTP_REFERR to see if its registered. If it is I will print back the code that should be inserted into the database.

Does anybody else have a idea?
I know about putting copyrights saying don't modified this script, but that never works.

Thanks,
Andrew

 

[MOrac]

Anything your script does to verify itself can be spoofed by reading the script. Don't bother. It will cost you more many hours to generate any given segment of copy protection than it will take an equivalent programmer to remove or bypass it. It's only worth doing for something which would be mass-marketed. You'd also have to be a very good mathematician to get worthwhile copy protection into an open script language.

Really, don't bother.

 

[sleipnir214]

I'd try something like Zend Safeguard Suite.


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[MOrac]

I wouldn't. shc is a free method of stopping people easily reading or altering your source code and there are many such. Most of which are no worse than Zend at hiding code. All Zend adds for its $3k is a licensing model and a restrictive lock-in to PHP. As the PHP interpreter is open source, it can trivially be instructed to expose the entire source - which limitation applies to any interpreted-source encryption. But each to their own. As I already said, only a good mathematician has much chance of placing obfuscated protective systems inside an interpreted language. And it's never cost-effective.

 

[sleipnir214]

True, this won't keep out the NSA. But is he selling his product to the NSA?


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[altendew]

Honestly it's not a big deal if someone places my script on their site without a license, Big whoop I have copyrights inside I will get them for that. I am just going to put something in the script that sends a request to my server when its installed. It really doesn't matter, and I dont feel like going through the hastle of buying a license to crypt my php code, thats just pointless.