Oliver Grätz wrote:
All attempts at shutting of access to the code is bound to fail. PHP is an interpreted anguage. If the script on the other server can read your code then the programmer of that script can also read your sourcecode. So, what to do? You could use some of the encoders. Using these tools the other people can still read the code but they'll find it too ugly to invest the work trying to understand it. But nothing keeps them from not even trying to understand it but just stealing it and using it as is. Nothing won. Then there's something from Zend that encodes your file so that it CAN'T be read as source code. A normal server can't even execute it. Your users will have to install some runtime module. The encoder isn't free, the runtime is. This stuff even allows for expiring licenses if I recall correctly. So you could give the code to your users and still you won't loose control over it. Finally: Why give users access to your code? Why don't you just let them use it in a specified way? Donig so is called defining a PROTOCOL. give your users exact specifications of what they may call and what they'll get back. There are even big enterprise-oh-my-god-complicated solutions for calling code remotely, with SOAP and the .NET web services being the most prominent ones. There's SOAP support in PHP so you might want to snoop at that. OK, gotta sleep ;-) OLLi
Thanks for the help from everyone on the list. I have a lot to consider. I will look into some of the encoders and possibly some of the SOAP services. Another option I am working on is to keep the scripts and data on my server. There may end up being some bandwidth issues, but I will have to see. This could be another alternative. Time for more research. :)
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