There's always been several PHP developers out there looking to protect the source that they so lovingly crafted. They look for alternatives to keeping it safe, but sometimes it's just not enough. In this new post on the Sjon.Blog today, he mentions some of the frustrations he's had already with exectly this.

Zend almost convinced me that their Safeguard Suite really secured your PHP scripts. Ofcourse I know that scripts need to be interpreted and executed and are therefore never 100% safe; but I expected some form of obfuscation and rewriting to prevent this. This doesn't seem to be the case though. I have had a look at PHP Obfuscator/Obscurer, but a good illustration of the quality of that script can be illustrated with a simple, readable example.

Also, obfuscating React took me almost an hour; which isn't that strange when you have had a look at the sourcecode.

As far as I've heard/seen so far, there's not really a good solution to this dilema. Sure, some are better than others, but there's still a hole there that is just waiting to be filled with an application anyone can use...