Ask HN: Are you worried about competitors copying your client-side JavaScript code? - philippnagel
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paulddraper
Copy my SPA JS code?

Oh please. You have no idea the hell you have brought upon yourself.

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benologist
About 99.99999999999% of people don't want anything to do with your code, your
site, your work, or any project you will ever do. Someone illicitly copying
your work sounds more like a goal than a problem cause of how popular it needs
to be first.

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mattbgates
You are 100% correct about this. I have become much more trustworthy in
describing to a few of my developer friends what my plans for any program I
write are. My fears used to be that they would steal the idea and go make
fortunes. What I found is that is untrue. Most of them don't care enough or
have time to figure out my "exact idea" and write a program to do it. I have
yet to see any of them ever attempt to steal an idea I have told them.
Instead, I usually confide in them to understand: "Do you think this is a good
idea? Should I even bother?"

They have never steered me wrong. There are projects they have loved and said,
"I would love to see it when you're finished. I would love to test it out!"
There are also other projects where: "It's not worth it to work on that." "I
don't really see that as a demand or useful to anyone but you."

99% of the time they are giving me solid and sound advice. I think the 1% that
remains is: Miscommunication. They misunderstand what I am after or I just
didn't explain it right.

As to answer the original question: Honestly, if my code is that good...
awesome. But I likely got that code from some sample library that can be found
anywhere on the Internet. If the code is good and it helps someone out, than
why not? I've tried to view source on sites for something cool that someone's
website was doing. Sometimes I can get the script, but often times, it is
usually a combination of javascript and some PHP scripts working together, so
it is not always easy to just grab the code.

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throwawaydbfif
Nah. Even client side UI is just that... A UI. It's trivial to copy a UI
anyways by just taking screenshots.

If more substantial parts of our apps were client side, like if we sold an
online image editor, I would be very afraid.

However I have doubts as to how much more vulnerable to copying JS is than
anything else. People have been pirating compiled apps just as long and they
don't seem any less prolific

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gumballhead
This happened at FarmLogs once. Our bug tracker started getting some really
weird exceptions due to a Chinese company reverse engineering our app with the
frontend code, which had our API key in it. We didn't really mind; it was just
funny.

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dbattaglia
Definitely not. Honestly I'm not worried about people seeing the backend code
either. I'm sure there are exceptions but it's been my experience that the
data is by far the most valuable asset for web/sass applications.

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TuringNYC
Having worked on legacy corporate code...I find it is often easier to just
observe products and reverse engineer them, rather than try to
understand/extend existing code. I would generally prefer to reverse
engineer+rebuild. Existing code isn't always great code, it may not even be
correct code.

And if your code really is that good and so unique that someone might want to
steal it, perhaps you should try to extract it and product-ify it. Possibly as
an open source project.

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spaceboy
A little bit, yes. But it's a given now that client-side JS is open source,
and many have got used to this. I've seen developers try to obfuscate their
code using obscure packing utilities, and abusing eval(), but such code is
trivial to de-obfuscate/unpack, and doing so only makes me want to see the
code _more_ since you've something to hide.

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compumike
Obfuscation works. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be good
enough that it's substantially harder to copy/reuse than to do whatever the
alternative is (rewrite, buy, etc).

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bbcbasic
Js is obfuscated as a language feature.

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seanwilson
Would a serious competitor ever risk being sued by copying your code verbatim?
Would copying just parts of your likely obfuscated codebase and trying to
integrate it into their own codebase be more difficult than reverse
engineering it?

I don't think it's something to worry about. Someone that is smart enough to
steal and use your code is smart enough to use a legal alternative.

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softwarefounder
Yes, well, to some degree. The best you can do is minify it.

I'm more concerned with competitors copying designs, and witty UX concepts
than actual JS code. This you can put obstacles in front of by making some
things only available post-purchase, or by "demo only" if the customer is
undecided.

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ftkr0
Absolutely no because It has not alternative choice. Any code can reverse-
engineering, any languages.

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kojeovo
Only to the point where I don't put sensitive information in it. I can see
theirs, they can see mine. Meh.

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wprapido
couldn't care less

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donovanm
No, I don't like to live my life in paranoia. Also anyone that was
sufficiently motivated could just implement it themselves anyways.

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pw
No.

