Liscencing a product..

[Taylor_1978]

Hi Folks,

Sorry in advance if I've placed this in the wrong area...

I have created a Ladder/Tournament Script that people can purchase from a website. I'm wondering what stops them from re-selling copies of the script I provide them.. Is simply stating a copyright and an agreement upon purchase enough legally? Meaning if I place such information with the script, and yet they still sell it or provide it to a third party, do I have a legal leg to stand on, or do I need to liscence the script somehow?

Any help would be much appreciated...

Thanks in advance! :thumbsup:

Taylor.

[Mhtml]

Anything that is your original work is your own intellectual property, nobody can resell it or distribute outside of bounds of the license which it is covered by. You can publish it under your own license or any of the popular software licenses if you can find one that fits what restrictions you would like to legally impose.

However yes, being PHP they have the source code. You can convert it to bytecode if you are really worried.

[dniwebdesign]

do explaing bytecode... sounds interesting and can help a few people on here.

[schotte]

An alternative would be that you offer the script together with hosting the script and not allowing them to access that particular folder via FTP.
Just a thought...

Frank

[Mhtml]

Well it's basically compiled PHP code. Well, exactly that I guess. You'll have to get to know the Zend engine to do it, there are already programs out there that will do it for you but they aren't free as far as I know. It's not fool proof but there aren't many people who'd get around it. If you say coupled this with a call home script you could have some decent protection going. I'm sure it's been discussed before here, maybe not. Google should turn up a few good links.

However this topic has pre-requisites of low level programming knowledge, at least an understanding of how things are compiled if you plan to write your own.

[edit:] Yeah that's a good idea, and remote hosting used to be pretty big a few years back.... Like counters and such, you could impliment something similar it's not hard. That way you get to really control who's using what.

[Taylor_1978]

Hiya,

Thanks for your replies! :)

My script however is for use by gaming leagues (similar to ones that use MyLeague.com) however with the difference being that they can buy the script and then modify it to suit their needs - as opposed to putting in requests for things and waiting for them to happen like what happens at MyLeague.

So to code the script, or to place it on one of my directories so they cannot access the script defeats purpose.. all good suggestions though if it was like MyLeague :)


Mhtml you answered my question with first reply, I was just simply worried that me writing a license or Terms of Service was not a good enough way to ensure I had legal rights in the case of someone reselling/distributing.

Thanks guys! :thumbsup: