[asterisk-biz] Protect Source Code based software

[Alex Balashov]

My experience is that there are certain people in the world that will 
want to pirate your program, or examine/use your code in some capacity. 
  You cannot stop them.  However, most people are opportunistic to some 
extent;  they will do things you don't want them to do if it's 
effortless or nearly effortless to do so.  They can easily be 
incentivised to do what you want by making the process of getting around 
your restrictions just tough enough that it's not worth their time.

So, you need to come up with a technique that will deter ordinary people 
through sheer inconvenience, rather than naively believe that you can 
stop determined crackers and elite reverse engineering specialists.  The 
latter are people who wouldn't pay you money anyway, and will steal your 
stuff if that's what they want to do.

I think one of the best ways is to pepper your code with a few calls to 
basic library routines that are implemented in a statically compiled 
binary or reloadable ELF module.  Do this just enough that the software 
won't really work without these calls.  Someone determined can figure 
out what the calls are and re-implement them, disassemble your binary, 
etc.  But it will stop the people that give up and just go get their 
manager to authorise a purchase order for a resale license instead.

Ignacio Ramos wrote:

> Hello frieds, we have finished the development of a high-enterprise
> multi-tenant call center and we are about to install it the client's
> NOC. How ever, we are a little worried about the client getting our
> software and reselling it, since we will install all the
> Asterisk+PHP+Ajax source code in their servers.
> 
> So I would like to know, how do you protect your OpenSource-based
> software from being copy&paste? Do you install only the executable
> files? what program do you use for that?
> 
> Thanks
> 
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-- 
Alex Balashov - Principal
Evariste Systems
Web     : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel     : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct  : (+1) (678) 954-0671