[wp-hackers] Premium plugin protection

[Thomas Scholz]

John Blackbourn:

> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 8:32 PM, Thomas Scholz <info at toscho.de> wrote:
>
>> Well spoken. Unfortunately, /wp-admin/js/revisions-js.php and the linked
>> code in <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/15262> is still far away  
>> from
>> "readable". :(
>
> Correct but that's for a different reason. It's not obfuscated in
> order to prevent the end user from modifying it or to prevent the user
> from otherwise excercising their rights under the GPL, it was
> obfuscated in order to make the easter egg a little harder for people
> to notice when it was added to WordPress. This was done so it didn't
> ruin the surprise.

Reasons and intentions are not part of the code. Otherwise, I could claim  
the same reason to obfuscate my plugins.

/*
Plugin Name: Nonsense Premium
Description: Does some stuff. Mostly easter eggs
Version:     1.2
License:     GPL v2
*/

It’s hard to tell the difference for the end user, isn’t it? ;)

> The fact it doesn't comply with the GPL was just an oversight.

There were enough long discussions about the file; and I don’t want to  
open this can again. The problem I wanted to show is: There is a gray  
area. Some people write so badly formatted code that it is *nearly*  
obfuscated (nested ternaries anyone?). Others refer to "easter eggs".  
There may be more reasons.

> It's
> wholly different to obfuscating code in order to prevent end users
> from modifying the code.

The effect is the same. And that’s all that matters.

Thomas

-- 
http://toscho.de