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Ask HN: Best way(s) to distribute a self-hosted, non-compiled product

by jnankin on 6/17/13, 4:02 PM with 6 comments

Say you have a product written in Ruby, Python, PHP etc. and you would like to distribute it as a self-hosted solution.

What are the best ways to go about doing this without having to worry about people ripping off your code?

I assume answers will fall into some of the following categories:

- compile/obfuscate code (i.e. cpython)

- submit product as a virtual image (like github enterprise)

- just don't care and rely on your bundled licenses

Each has their own up/down sides. Discuss. :)

  • by firstprimate on 6/17/13, 4:07 PM

    I am going with the last option. Rely on bundled licenses. Seeing as I also provide a fully managed service, I include all software updates etc. for those who pay the annual license.

    The rest are not my customers and worrying about them is a distraction.

  • by sdrinf on 6/19/13, 12:46 AM

    There was a pretty dense discussion on the first option at Stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5069791/challenge-maximiz...

    The most viable target market for self-hosted products are still entreprises ; deployment via virtual images might be the most feasable solution for all parties involved.

    Second-best option, specifically for eg. PHP, might be compiling the code into executables (via eg. https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php ), and distributing distro-specific executables.

    Re: 3rd option, the specific worry about distributing code in any form isn't piracy (as pointed out by firstprimate, those aren't your customers); rather, blatant ripoffs engaging in marketing-only competition using a rebranded version of your own product.

  • by rotnewson on 6/17/13, 4:47 PM

    The github way is pretty good because most businesses use some sort of virtualization (usually vmware) once they become a certain size.

    But really it depends on who you are selling to and what you are selling, some companies just have the customer pay for a server and then the company ships it out with a guy to install it (better for small businesses that don't have dedicated sysadmins).

  • by gesman on 6/17/13, 6:54 PM

    http://zencrypt.com for PHP obfuscation. It's not NSA-grade encryption - but it works for 99.9% hosting accounts without need for specialized libraries.

    It obfuscates your code well.

  • by wmf on 6/17/13, 4:06 PM

    People don't buy software any more anyway; they only buy cloud services.