Source Code Availability

Our company has a vast experience in developing and distributing software with open source code. The open code concept has proven its efficiency through the years and is highly valued by our customers. Source code availability gives significant benefits to end users, including but not limited to:

•	the possibility to customize the software according to their needs,

•	the possibility to create third-party modules and integrate the software into existing environments, and

•	the opportunity to better control the software operation by understanding how it works.

However, open code software is extremely vulnerable to intellectual property abuse and software piracy. This is why many software vendors keep their source code in secret. When developing LiteCommerce online store builder we decided to combine open code and binary distribution approaches. About 97% of LiteCommerce source code is open and less then 3% is distributed in binary form. Source code of user level and kernel of the software are open, providing opportunity for software customization and third-party development. Only certain low-level system routines, which we believe should never be customized by the end user, are distributed in the binary form.

We use ionCube® technology to protect our source code from unauthorized use. Like any other compiler it translates PHP code into executable object code, which is executed when the software runs on the server. An added value of compiling PHP code is that pre-compiled PHP code is executed faster than plain-text PHP files, since there is no need of performing lexical and syntactical analysis of the code during the execution process. To learn more about ionCube® technology, visit the ionCube website at http://www.ioncube.com/.