Question:
I developed a system and the place where I work wants to distribute it to all branches, I have no intention of charging for it while I work there, but if I ever leave, yes.
The system is made in PHP, so I'd like to know if there's any way I can cloak my code, embarrass, I don't know, and still keep it functional, or some other alternative, because if I go out and have someone else code PHP she will be able to mess with my code.
Answer:
There are ways to protect the code , however, the best ones, Zend Guard and IonCube , are commercially licensed.
Code obfuscation is done which makes Reverse Engineering quite difficult because, basically, the code will no longer be written as you wrote it (variable names, functions, etc.) and so it is coded and optimised.
However, closing the source code does not insure your intellectual property, nor does it relieve you of any contractual responsibilities you may have with the company, if any.
This is because many companies tend to own everything that is developed or conceived in the work environment. And in these cases, not only can you not restrict access either to the application, through a software licence, or to its source code, whether by the aforementioned tools or other competitors.