NYCPHP Meetup

[Dan Cech]

Ben Sgro (ProjectSkyline) wrote:
> Hello All, 
> 
> I just recieved an email w/a promotion/sale for the SourceGuardian Encoder.
> 
> I'd been looking into this for a bit and wanted to know if anyone could provide feedback on it. I have a lot of code I'd like to keep under wraps
> when distributing applications to shared hosts..and even releases some parts of code 'open' and others 'closed'.
> 
> I'm looking for comments regarding setup on linux boxes (the encoded files), running the GUI under windows..as that is my setup.
> Also, for shared hosting and such..how is the setup..does it work well w/no php.ini edits..as I believe you load the module at run time..?
> 
> Anyways...any feedback is helpful...
> 
> http://www.sourceguardian.com/purchase/index.php

I haven't used source guardian, but reading their documentation it seems
quite similar to the Ioncube Loader, which we have had great success with.

If you're considering runtime loading I did notice that their example on
this page:

http://sourceguardian.com/products/php_encoder.htm

shows the encoded file content being passed to the sg_load function as a
string.  To my thinking this seems like it might be somewhat slow and
memory intensive for files of any size, as the complete encoded string
must be loaded into memory before it is passed to the extension.

All in all, I'd very carefully weigh the pros and cons between SG and
IONCube before committing to either.

I can't comment on Zend Guard, which seems to be the other big player in
this market, except to say that their pricing structure makes for a
tough comparison to ioncube and SG.

Dan