Source Code Stealing
Written by Roman on February 6, 2009 – 2:18 pmRecently I talked to a developer who left our project for about 15 months ago to work in a larger company. He told about many strange things happening in that company at the moment.
Last year they employed ex-military guy to work as a manager. The guy thought that company source code was in danger and implemented a few source code protection “smart” ideas:
- None of developer computer has Internet connection at the moment. There is only one machine having Internet access, but that machine is not in a company computer network.
- USB sockets are disconnected.
- There are plenty of video cameras in the office; all top managers can see what anybody does any time.
I had really hard time to believe it is all true. But the fact is, within a few months the company got 60% of its staff only – I can imagine it is not easy task to motivate yourself working in this environment.
Generally speaking, I think that the problem of source code stealing is a kind of assumed problem. To make your product successful, you need something else besides the source code. In our drug database the stealing of source code is simply useless – the main point is in drug information. Even if drug information is stolen, you need to make sure the updates are coming regularly; otherwise you can not safely use the software. It is similar to licensing your software – those who want to steal will steal anyway. But you will spend a lot of time and efforts making more advanced protection. And potentially you might make troubles for your paying customers who got issues activating the product.
What do you think – the problem of stealing source code is real and serious, or it is just a fake used by certain managers for total control over the company staff?
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February 14th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Yes I think the besides Software piracy, source code stealing can create bigger hidden losses to the corporate.It is even tougher to discover this, as source code shall not be visible as an end-product, or it can be easily changed for usage in a new product(IP retained).
Not heard of companies filing a case against individual or own employee for having sold source code illegally or built his home grown product using the company source code.
To conclude this finally comes to TRUST between employer and employee and the professionalism,ethics inside a software developer !
February 14th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
If you use an algorithm that you have invented yourself and it is a kind of top-secret stuff - them probably you are right. But for majority of shareware products, I believe, it makes no sense even if somebody gets your code. Because the source code is not the only think needed for running your software business.
This s why open source software is so widely used, and this is why many products have the source code as part of the installation.
February 25th, 2009 at 2:47 am
Stealing source code is a major problem, but beware I can’t find anyone who thinks this is a real crime. It appears that this is a civil matter and if you are a new business getting started this could make or break your company. Daily I watch a copy of our website being modified into something else, if you even google our name the hacked site shows up. I can see who owns it in who is, but not one law enforcement agency thinks this is a crime. I still maintain that this is theft and a cease and desist was already sent, they took down the clone site and two days later set up another one and didn’t even bother to take out references to our company name. The back end code is our proprietary code and even if he changes the front end we will have to compete with someone who stole our backend. So I say there should be someway to go after someone who knowingly steals someone elses code for monetary gain. If someone knows how to get help for this I would be happy to hear it.