Software Business in the Middle East

We would like to make a new web site for our company and all the products we have – any recommendations for an experienced freelancer doing web 2.0 sites? Your story telling about the experience working with her or him is very well appreciated. Thanks!

Recently 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?

I came to the stand on the exhibition of one company that might be our partner or competitor – it depends. The guys at the stand seemed to be very busy talking to each other, so I decided to make an experiment and see how much time they would need to notice that somebody is at their stand looking at the product materials and clicking on the button here and there on a demo computer.

They noticed me after 15 minutes. Several other visitors came to me with their questions during that time assuming I am a part of that company. It seems to be a nice idea – if your competitor does not pay much attention to the visitors, you can stay their talking about their product disadvantages