I have a question about commercial extensions:
How are those being distributed? By now, I saw that you the most time have to check out on the store of the distributor of this extension.
So, you have to handle the payment by yourself? And can these extensions then be installed through Magento Connect?
How can you protect your code? I read about Zend Guard, but can you integrate this into Magento?
Or how do other developers protect their code of commercial extensions?
Would be nice if some people join this discussion.
Well, as far as I know at the moment you have to distribute your extensions throughout your own website, i.e. you have to handle the payment yourself.
For the installation you can offer a zip package that is to be extracted to the magento folder and installs the module or/and the theme.
I used to use ejunkie.com for payment and distribution of my code, it’s cheap and easy.
Encrypting your code will have a performance impact and may not be in the Open Source spirit. You’ll have to think long and hard about this.
You could for example make your extension very cheap and Open Source but without good documentation. You can then sell a support service, like Varien does.
