Non Vanilla software licence tracking

davey_h

I have a non Vanilla php script of my own that I will shortly be selling. Any one got ideas about some sort of software licence tracking or authorisation coding to stop it being passed about on the sly?
cheers

garymardell

There are things such as ioncube which encrypt the source and you need ioncube on your server to run the script. However this makes your script highly uncustomizable. Things such as this should not be worried about so much. It is highly unlikely it will happen to the extent you think it might. I know it probably seems like the most important thing in the world but its not. The average user will come to you if the script quality is good and buy it. (Its the same with all software). Having a license key given with the software isn't a bad idea, for example vbulletin's approach where by a license is url specific and to get access to addons and updates you need a valid license.

bobtheman

@davey_h
I would recommend using creative commons http://creativecommons.org/ to publish your "script" under an open source approved license that still allows you to charge for providing the script if you choose to do so. For example GPL. Having a closed source, proprietary script is counter productive for developers and users of an opersource project.

garymardell

@bobtheman Not if he is selling the script, creative commons would allow any person with the script to them freely distribute it. This isn't really a case for open source, if anything its the complete opposite. I'm all for supporting the open source movement, however this just doesn't fall into that category.

davey_h

Thanks Guys.
The script is intended to be domain specific so I think I like the licence key idea the best. I do not want to restrict any customising of it that the user wants and it isn't suited to open source par say.
I agree that most will just buy the software if they like it (I'll run a demo) and it will be cheap as chips anyway. But I just want to underline the fact that it is not for free distribution willy nilly.
Anyone know of any licensing key products? Ill do a search but if anyone knows please let on. If that was open source it will be good or I will end up paying more than I will earn!
Regards

garymardell

You don't really need any license software really, in all honesty it will be mainly for show. Just make a small script that generates a random unique hash, the user buying the product supplies a domain url. However you have to remember that a lot of people will probably buy with no real intent to use it on a specific domain on purchase. I think that you are probably overestimating the likelihood of people distributing it anyways. I would just take the approach that you sell it, have a license that is meant to stop more than one install etc and then if you find it being shared then you have the license to back you up. If the software is decent the user is likely to want to give back anyway.