As long as it's open source, you can always add your own hooks.
You can still trap and drop the pCode. Nothing can stop that.
IonCube is just another same-game. Hell, with IonCube loading a DSO realtime, it's even easier to trap. make a simple function wrapper, set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and dump.
What this industry has taught me is that we've got it wrong: As programmers, or a corporation who provides software, the primary objective is to make your software so shitty that people need to pay you for support. If they don't, it won't work.
(I only wish I was kidding.)