With all this talk about encoded scripts I was trying to think of other options to...
 

Protect vendors and clients.

I cant think of any short of recoding the progs in C or similar and compiling them to distribute as EXEs.

I hate the idea that my sites are dependent on another server being up 24/7.

Any other bright ideas?

This is a NATS/MPA free thread!! (except for that bit)

I don't quite understand your question.

LOL, yes, I'm sure you'll answer that question on GFY! Cmon now everybody - lets recode all open source PHP in C and compile... ROFL

How can you have a script on your computer only, while still protecting the code for the developers benefit?

The only way I can think of doing it is to use compiled code and as far as I know there isnt a way of doing it with PHP...

I asked for alternatives and made it clear that redoing code in C and compiling is not realistic.

You might also be suprised at what some people on GFY have come up with in the past.

Currently - impossible if its coded in PHP

Improbable.

If you don't want someone to have your source, you have to convert it to p-code, such as the case with Zend/ionCube or an executable. Making a platform specific program hinders you and makes it nearly impossible to support.

You are right. Compiling in C is about the only way and you still have to be careful how you set that up.

Just search on my nick and see when I released tubecgi in C and because of not wanting to get on everyone's server and fix libraries, I re-wrote it in perl.
Then do a search on tube scripts and see how many new tube scripts were amazingly now for sale after I released in perl. :1orglaugh

Those half assed copies are going to fuck up but people have to get abused before they realize it.

Enout encoding, I believe I've seen it posted that Zend-encoding can be decoded. Does the same hold true for ioncube-encoding?

Everything can be unencoded by the right people but in many cases the unencode code is so fucked that they can't do much with it that is practical in time and energy.