Say you have a product written in Ruby, Python, PHP etc. and you would like to distribute it as a self-hosted solution.<p>What are the best ways to go about doing this without having to worry about people ripping off your code?<p>I assume answers will fall into some of the following categories:<p>- compile/obfuscate code (i.e. cpython)<p>- submit product as a virtual image (like github enterprise)<p>- just don't care and rely on your bundled licenses<p>Each has their own up/down sides. Discuss. :)
I am going with the last option. Rely on bundled licenses. Seeing as I also provide a fully managed service, I include all software updates etc. for those who pay the annual license.<p>The rest are not my customers and worrying about them is a distraction.
There was a pretty dense discussion on the first option at Stackoverflow: <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5069791/challenge-maximize-cost-of-obfuscations-reverse-engineering" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5069791/challenge-maximiz...</a><p>The most viable target market for self-hosted products are still entreprises ; deployment via virtual images might be the most feasable solution for all parties involved.<p>Second-best option, specifically for eg. PHP, might be compiling the code into executables (via eg. <a href="https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php</a> ), and distributing distro-specific executables.<p>Re: 3rd option, the specific worry about distributing code in any form isn't piracy (as pointed out by firstprimate, those aren't your customers); rather, blatant ripoffs engaging in marketing-only competition using a rebranded version of your own product.
The github way is pretty good because most businesses use some sort of virtualization (usually vmware) once they become a certain size.<p>But really it depends on who you are selling to and what you are selling, some companies just have the customer pay for a server and then the company ships it out with a guy to install it (better for small businesses that don't have dedicated sysadmins).
<a href="http://zencrypt.com" rel="nofollow">http://zencrypt.com</a> for PHP obfuscation.
It's not NSA-grade encryption - but it works for 99.9% hosting accounts without need for specialized libraries.<p>It obfuscates your code well.