php ecommerce application business model?

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Luke
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php ecommerce application business model?

Post by Luke »

I am currently working on an ecommerce application in php (on top of the Zend Framework). I am building it for a specific client, but I am only licensing the product to them. Even though I'm building it for this specific client, I intend to build it in such a way that it will work for just about any ecommerce site. I am pretty new to selling php applications. I have only ever written free/open source apps. While this app may eventually be open source, I don't intend (ever) to give it away. I intend to sell it, and I intend to sell extensions for it. My question is, how do I protect myself from people stealing it? I can't very well hide the source from people. I mean, once they have it, they have it. They can copy it and use it on as many sites as they want. What can I do to protect myself from that?
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Luke
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Re: php ecommerce application business model?

Post by Luke »

Hmm, I just found this. Kind of a helpful article about selling GPL'd code.

http://www.hiveminds.co.uk/?p=3710
alex.barylski
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Re: php ecommerce application business model?

Post by alex.barylski »

Don't sell it as GPL...create a custom license...
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Darhazer
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Re: php ecommerce application business model?

Post by Darhazer »

You can use Ioncube encoder or Zend encoder to protect the source code. We are selling in this way, encoding only few core files, so third parties still can made extensions, and to use the software, you need a license file, and it's locked to a domain name... for the developers, there are developers' licenses, which produce nag screens.
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onion2k
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Re: php ecommerce application business model?

Post by onion2k »

Give it away. Sell support/customisation. That way the popularity of the product drives sales rather than you having to market it.

Marketing is the hard bit of running a business.
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