About ScriptLock
ScriptLock is the result of a demand for a simplified script licensing and protection device; one that would not require special PHP modules or extensions to be installed on the client server.
The primary motive for ScriptLock was to provide a software licensing solution for client server installed applications written in PHP. The basic requirements were:
Module Independence
The solution had to work without 3rd party PHP modules or Zend extensions.
Default Installation Support
The solution had to on a standard default PHP install, with no reliance on encryption and other extensions that are not enabled by default.
Secure Protection
The solution must provide secure encryption/protection of the original source code, and to prevent trivial to moderate attempts at reverse-engineering.
Self-Decoding script
In addition to the above, the solution must be self-decoding.
Server Licensing
The solution must be able to support deployment to the client's target server. Licenses are to be restricted to either the target server's domain or IP address. Unlicensed or expired installations are to be prevented from further execution of the protected application.
ScriptLock was developed in response to these similar and recurring requirements from application development work that we'd previously done.
In addition to the above requirements, various perceived disadvantages of existing script encoding solutions were also considered:
License Separation
Almost all existing PHP script encoding solutions require the protected script to be re-encoded with specific licensing terms for each client.
What we needed was a simplified license management system that could be administered separately from the encoded script, and which would not require the script to be re-encoded for different clients or licensing requirements.
Pure PHP Implementation
To address the requirements for a self-decoding script that could work without installing additional 3rd party modules and extensions, we decided that the self-decoding script had to be written in 100% pure PHP; and which would be able to work on PHP 4.3.0 to 5.2x installations.
And thus, ScriptLock was born...
