How do you prevent hired developers from stealing code? [closed]

Question

I'm in the process of opening up a company that will eventually hire 2-5 developers to work on a large web app.

My main concern is that one or more developers could steal the code. I could make them sign contracts against this type of thing, but I live in a country where the law is "bendable".

Is my only option to lock them up in a room without inet access and usb ports?

I'd love to know how others have solved this problem.

Answer 1

1. Don't hire people you can't trust.

2. Break the app into sections and only let people work on a subset of the app, never getting access to the whole thing.

3. Make it worth their while - you're opening a company, hire people and give them some stock options. Make sure it's more attractive for them to make you succeed than otherwise.

Answer 2

How about keeping them all happy and show that you appreciate their work?

Answer 3

You may find that you think your source code is the valuable part of your business, but you can always build that again. Your real advantage over your competitors is usually in the people you hire, and in the business relationships that you establish in the course of naturally doing business.

Answer 4

My suggestion is not technical but social: Make them feel good.

Most human beings have a moral base that prevents them from hurting other people who have treated them with respect and generosity.

There's a slim chance you'll wind up hiring a psychopath, in which case this approach won't work -- but then, it's likely to be the least of your worries.

Answer 5

The only thing that occures to me is to make them sign a contract where you explicit that if they share any code outside the project ambient, they'll compromise to pay you a large amount of money. But there's no guarantee they'll not do it anyway ..

Answer 6

You can create a vitual environment (a virtual machine) with limited internet connection (only to specific servers - git/svn server, database server, etc) and no copy/paste possibilities. This virtual machine would be a standard environment with common developer tools. At the office a developer would remotely connect to the virtual machine and start developing without being able to steal the code. Of course he could print the screen or type the code on another computer but it's still very hard to steal.

Answer 7

There are many encrypting softwares available to encrypt the code. Here is an example http://www.codeeclipse.com/step1.php In other words you can hide the code of one developer(one module) from the other developer and he will not be able to take the whole code himself in any case if you follow this approach.

Thanks Sunny