[wp-hackers] Premium plugin protection

[Otto]

Just a data point to consider.

Obfuscating your source code makes other developers hate you, badmouth
you, and send as much negative press your way as possible. Why?
Because you have made them look bad.

Friend of mine called me up a few months ago. Said her boss was having
problems with a WordPress installation (big local blog). I wandered
down to their offices, met with them, found out what the problem was,
sat down at her desk... and got totally screwed over because the (paid
for) theme used frickin' encryption on the functions.php file. All
they wanted was some relatively minor changes, but because of the
encryption (good hard stuff too, not easy to decode), there was
basically nothing I could do. I had to make my apologies as best I
could. Then I immediately got on Twitter and badmouthed the hell out
of the theme creators.

Consider your users and what's best for them. What's *really* best for
them is not having to come to you for every single little problem. If
they can learn something and solve issues themselves, then you should
let them do so. What are you selling here, after all? Lock in?

People who obfuscate or otherwise make their code hard for their users
to use are scum. Period.

-Otto