Hello, I run Pixozu Productions, and we make TheGRPG Framework and WarriorBattle. I sell both of these scripts unencrypted, so that people who have rightfully paid for the scripts can modify the source to whatever they need it to do. However, by doing so, it allows anyone who purchased these scripts from me to sell them as their own, and to make profit off of my work, and take profit away from me. I have seen a few members on the DP forums doing it, as well as tons of other places (just for my scripts alone, god only knows how many other people are being ripped off as well...). I know that I could encrypt the source, and/or require the domain that the scripts are gonna run on to be registered on my own domain, so that it works as a sort of licensing management, so that the scripts will only run if I have whitelisted that particular domain, but that would require me to encrypt the source, or at least make it so that my customers can't view and edit the source of the scripts they have purchased. Is there anyway of preventing piracy of php scripts, while still allowing the source to be viewable and editable by people who have rightly purchased the script?
Besides the methods you have already mentioned you can also have a unique registration ID that the user must enter to activate the script. Even with encryption though it is impossible to prevent someone from pirating your script if they want it badly enough.
But if they had that unique registration id to activate the script, would the source still be viewable? And if so, couldn't they just modify the part that tells the script not to run, if there is registration ID? P.S. Thanks for the reply.
I think that the best way would be to either 1.) Encrypt only one or two pages that contain vital functions. If users want to edit this, they can ask you to include the feature in a new version. 2.) Provide an open source program, however include calls to your own site once a day for updates and function processing. This can work effectively however it relies on having a constantly up server with reliable hosting and zero downtime. I would not recommend this if you are planning to distribute on a small scale
I like the encrypting only a few pages idea, that's genius! I'm going to start doing that on my script, thanks man!