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Can PHP be copyrighted?

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 5:31 am
by Mindwreck
Just wandering.

?

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 3:57 pm
by AVATAr
what do you mean? your code?

you want to protect your code?

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 6:48 pm
by Mindwreck
basically, yeah

im just wandering if it is possible to copyright PHP code

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 6:52 pm
by qads
i think you can but i am not sure...IT is like makeing a picture from your own mind and calling it yours..but it was't made on your head, it was made on paper and you did't make the paper.....i think i had too many cookies 8O

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 7:00 pm
by mydimension
are you basiclly wanting to slap a copyright notice at the bottom of your pages? if so, sure you can

are you wanting to distribute you project(s) and say they are copyrighted? that gets a bit more tricky and i honestly don't know how to answer it. you might ask some well known php application developers how they implement copyrights.

Let's answer that.

Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 3:03 am
by jdillon
Yes, it's copywrited if it's original work. Period.

That's the nature of (c), wether or not you declare it. But, that won't stop people from rippin' you off. Do consider carefully whether or not you want to do this, as most of the time you should release your source code (I mean, hey, think about how much people have given you, then make your decision... I've been so helped by open-source over the years).

What will?

Well, ZEND makes Zend Optimizer, which will let you encode your stuff for distrobution. The client (end user) will need ZEND installed to make it work, but it's damn secure.

There are also a class that does this that's open source. I can't remember where I saw it. I think it was either on http://www.phpclasses.org or hotscripts.com.

Cheers.

Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2002 7:41 am
by alimax
release your paid code as open source with a link to get it and more UNLESS your contract/licence says otherwise -

One good question - once someone has paid you for a script can they resell it??? I am sure the answer will lie in your original contract/licence, in effect you are either licensing someone to use your code in a limited way (e.g. on one web server or at one domain) or you are selling your code outright to be done with whatever.

Another interesting issue is when you have developed a super community engine paid for by Mr A can you now sell the very same solution to Mr B (Mr As competitor) at half price???? Again I would have thought the answer should lie in the contract/licence, if Mr A insists on an "exclusive" licence, i.e. you cannot sell this on as he now owns it, then you would expect him to pay HEAVILY for the privilige....

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2003 5:26 pm
by Gen-ik
A lot of website developers have a library of pre-written code and functions that they use on any projects they get, so a forum engine for example can be modified for each project and it will look completely different on each one.

Customers pay for the design/creation of the website.. whether or not they are also paying for the use of your 'pre-written code' is up to you.

If you don't want them to see or steal the code then just keep it on your server and use include("www.yoursever.com/code/xxx.php").. but they might get funny about this.

This subject is always a tricky one but at the end of the day unless you tell them that you are writting exclusive code for their website then you don't need to. The code you write (as long as it IS your own and not put together from other peoples work) is yours, and is automatically copyrighted to you as soon as you write it... that's the law.


I always believe though that if someone is paying you to create something for them then what you create is theirs, and theirs to do as they wish with.

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2003 6:51 pm
by Beans
Hi!

I think you can copyright your code or at least protect it using Zend Encoder. It's not for free though.

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2003 10:45 pm
by Stoker
Protecting something and owning it is two different things, as jdillon said, anything that you wrote is yours for no-one else to use unless you explicit let them to, such as the GPL licence, it still doesnt remove the coipyright, it simply allows others to use it and change it, but no matter who changes it or how much it is changed, the original parts of the code is till owned by you (meaning you can distribute under other licenses etc at your own will, as long as you do not include anything that anyone else commited under the GPL license).

Some declare their code/documents/software etc as public domain or royalty free, according to many countries laws this still doesn't remove the copyright of the code, although the owner probably doesn't care that much anymore..

Licenses such as GPL does not allow closing of code, some others do, such as MPL and BSD that lets you use others code in a closed-source application, but you still can not claim copyright of your own on everything in your application if you used such sources...

I am by all means no expert and this is just how I believe it works, I would contact lawyers if I was going to issue commercial licenses of any more-expensive-than-cheap stuff..

Protecting/hiding and such is a dfifferent matter and has nothing to do with copyright...

Bottom line is, the world is a better place the more GPL and LGPL software and libs we get, as thinkgeek writes on their t-shirts, in a world without fences, who need Gates?

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2003 2:38 am
by McGruff
Copyright laws will be slightly different in different countries.

In the UK, I think that, if you develop on an employers machine, he owns the copyright. Most people will be working on their own machines however.

If you develop something like an online shop publishing the code could make it easier for hackers to make off with some credit card numbers. I agree about keeping code open source whenever you can but on the other hand security breaches aren't good for the reputation of php as a secure platform. Also, if you're pitching for a job creating an online shop telling your client that "by the way I'm going to make this free for everyone else" might not go down well.

So, I think it's fair to go either way with an application with high security needs - and if you do release it as open source make sure it is as unhackable as you can make it.

AFAIK, releasing stuff under the GPL means that you can let people use it for free while preventing people from selling your code. In practice I'm not sure how much that helps: although another developer can't sell your php application I think he could be paid to install it on behalf of someone else which winds up pretty much the same.

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2003 4:06 am
by pootergeist
also note: if you aim for too restrictive a copyright clause you will lose a certain amount of credibility in the open-source community. I tend toward distributing classes and such as 'free for non-commercial, non-profit usage' and just inform anyone who wants to use the class files to contact me prior to implimentation. When they do enquire, I quickly work out whether there are any additional code snips that they'd find useful and ask if they'd contract me to do the extra work.

As the non-commercial base copyright is free, the exposure through the community is a lot faster and wider spread than if I restricted all use.

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2003 6:58 am
by hawk
The only solution is crypting with Zend Encoder all files or core libraries only to allow some alterations by customers. We use this approach in our products[/url]