Copyright for a PHP Class

[mooeypoo]

Hi,

I've made a PHP class that is the basis for my wordpress and joomla
plugins. Since it's for plugins, then I must distribute the actual
code (in a zip file, usually), so people do have access to the code
itself.

I am not as naive to think that people *can't* copy it or read it (and
I don't much mind that they read it for learning purposes) but I do
mind about making adaptions to my code at this moment. In the future I
might use GNU/GPL copyrights for some of my other classes (sharing is
caring! ;) but this one, well, for various reasons I would rather not
allow anyone to copy it.

I haven't seen anything online about protecting sourcecode or
programming code, but it *is* mine to protect (my 'artistic output',
so-to-speak).

Does anyone know what my options are regarding copyright
infringements? Hence, what can I do, at least as much as possible
legally (or with a correct copyright definition I can later use if my
code *is* stolen) to protect myself from code theft?

Thanks a lot!

~miss moo

[Alex Weber]

there's definitely people out there that can give you a better answer
but i know a thing or two:

i only know specifically about open-source and you can read more and
compare the different types of licenses here:
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/licenses_summary.html

basically there's nothing you can do short of severly compressing/
encrypting/obfuscating your code in order to make it unreadable to
stop people from copying it. if someone does in fact use your
copyrighted material without permission and you catch them you can
take legal action but unless they made millions off your work chances
are you're just wasting your time.

either way my advice is to release everything under an open-source
license and just charge companies for using it.

Alex

[mooeypoo]

Thanks for the reply :)

I did some more reading, checked what other programmers are doing and
I found that Creative Commons is also used. My plan all along was to
allow my code to be used freely for *private* use but not for
commercial use, and apparently Creative Commons answers some of my
needs.

I don't think anyone would make millions off my code (I'm not a
completely pro programmer, more of a hobbyist with relatively
highlevel code skills), but I work hard on some of my code, and I
wanted to check some of the protections that I can get for myself.

Thanks for the reply!

~moo