title: Decode a PHP encoded with 'zend guard'
body: <p>We have a website maintained by an old employee and it appears it's encoded by Zend Guard including all backups.</p>
  
  <p>I know a little about Zend Optimizer, but never considered it for source protection as I know in the end the bytecode will need to be decoded for the interpreter, and was sure people easily decode optimized files using some software.</p>
  
  <p>Now I need to decode some files and I can't find anything but some 'paid services'. We have the ownership of the code and are locked out now for any changes and debugging. How can I decode our files back?</p>