Stopping Piracy!

[Chen]

Yeah yeah, whatever...

[postalbobo]

I like the piracy scheme in use now.

I have a public install of vB, I have a liscence for it.

I have a private install of vB using my public liscence. The private install is on this PC only, running a local copy of apache so I can test hacks, new releases, and database dumps.

If I had to call in to activate, or if it phoned home, I'd get reported for my test install. That would suck. I'd have to blindly upgrade, risk b0rking my forum, and piss off my users whenever I wanted to make a change (since I'm no PHP master and end up missing semicolons quite often...)

Phoning home has always, and will always suck. This is why I install windows with my network cable unplugged...

[WildWayz]

Hmmm why not use Zend Optimizer to compile the admin function files into executable code?
Then you can put the check code in there and people cannot edit it out cos it is all garbage when they edit it.

James

[JamesUS]

Two reasons:

1) It needs users to have Zend Optimizer on their server, and the majority don't.
2) It stops people hacking that file

[WildWayz]

1. Zend = easy to install
2. Hmmm how about non-hacking stuff = in a file that is Zend Optimised - the rest is hackable.

Urm... was just an idea

--James

[JamesUS]

Not easy to install if you're on a shared server

It's definitely a good idea - we have discussed doing this, but it was decided that it would be impossible to keep it working on as many sites as possible.

[WildWayz]

Originally posted by JamesUS
Not easy to install if you're on a shared server

It's definitely a good idea - we have discussed doing this, but it was decided that it would be impossible to keep it working on as many sites as possible.

I suppose you are right

All Cpanel webhosts have no excuse tho - its a 2 second job to run the pre-made module that comes with Cpanel which installs it

At least if it was implemented, it would stop all these freehosts using pirated boards.

Ah well

--James

[Magic]

Well... it seems like a good idea, yeah, until you throw in all the conditionals

The problems with PHP lie in its open source nature, which isn't so much a problem until you make people pay for software. I can think of a million ideas, but once you bring up that one chareristic of php... un-encoded. maybe if php would allow us to create a dynamic encryption algorithm, we could do this and make it safe. But I don't see that happening, so we're going to have to have faith in our customers until there is a real solution. Sort of like windows, how long have they been working at it, and how complicated is it, and it's still not working . I think we should put this issue on the back burner for now...