Hockey wrote:What are some key benefits you see in licensed software over hosted/SaS (Software as a Service)?
The question is what benefits would the
client see. Imagine a web app for internal company use - they would certainly want it hosted in their intranet only, and won't accept third parties having access to their corporate information. In that case, a licensed solution is your only choice really, so put a clause saying they shouldn't thinker with the code etc.
And of course you can't trust any corporate lying descendant of a female dog, so if you're really paranoid about it, put some technical measures as well. Think blackhattish - backdoor(s), call-home, source obfuscation, checks against environmental variables... Now, you live in a 1st world country, where one could maybe hope to sue (if you can manage to catch them violate your contract). Here - I just prefer being errrm technically insured.
Here's some output from my in-house obfuscator. The whole piece-of-software the client gets is one 300k file with no comments and whitespace

. Deployment of new versions is a charm - here's your file, just copy it over.
Code: Select all
function qd0g1pmy7($rVn8mvB,$_ddoexuvX=0){return $this->_q1w0tx5($rVn8mvB,0,0,$_ddoexuvX,Array());}function zabi0_d($OXFXYTEF,$womkfXN5k,$em1kohcL,$U2jCIkn,$N3DrDNgHJz){$KSF4tx_=$this->ng3dy76a8c($OXFXYTEF,$womkfXN5k);$hLPl3wN=$OXFXYTEF[floor($N3DrDNgHJz/2)];$AoFkbtQYQSp=$N3DrDNgHJz%2?'DESC':'ASC';$U3onZfkjJ=$this->zd6p982xzv($em1kohcL,$U2jCIkn);