Requiring Ioncube for beta Issues

[ssslippy]

First thing is that Ioncube and xcache don't mix well. This reduces testing in the best single server cache/php acceleration tool. Also now with the hook/plugin system you can easily modify core code to do whatever.

Is there any reason for this anymore?

I can understand on the products that are not released at all aka nexus because people will try to use it on a live site. However it makes my life of testing miserable as ioncube not only slows down load times itself I cant even see what the system is actually putting into cache since I have to disable it.

[Mark]

Problem is... if people start modifying the code, we'll get tons of false bug reports that are actually problems with code people have added.

We get a lot of tickets that, after we spend a long time investigating, turn out to be problems created by modifications - if the developers had to do this during development... well... we'd be in beta for much longer.

[Mark H.]

By using Ioncube encoding in the Betas, IPS can put in an expiration date for the software which can't then be simply edited to bypass the expiration.

They have other valid reasons, too, but this might one be the most obvious.

EDIT: What Mark said! :D

[ssslippy]

The hook and plugin system is the same as modifying code. They already have a modification section on the official modification site. This nullifies the point of ioncube as u can insert code into these files.

On the note of experation dates I don't believe this applies to the forum software as they announce experation dates.

[Alex K.]

The hook and plugin system is the same as modifying code. They already have a modification section on the official modification site. This nullifies the point of ioncube as u can insert code into these files.

On the note of experation dates I don't believe this applies to the forum software as they announce experation dates.

The expiration dates are dates when the software will stop working. If they were removed, people could use the beta forever.

[Josh]

The hook and plugin system is the same as modifying code. They already have a modification section on the official modification site. This nullifies the point of ioncube as u can insert code into these files.

On the note of experation dates I don't believe this applies to the forum software as they announce experation dates.

The forum betas do have expiration dates, just to make sure that we don't have old copies of them floating around.

[ssslippy]

Ah I see I did not realize they had expiration as u never mentioned them in the news posts like others.

[Brandon D]

I can understand encoded development releases but encoding a final, stable release is doing your customers a disservice. But this has been debated to hell and back so I digress :P