Rats! There is evil in the world afterall! I figured all this concern over theft was paranoia, but I guess nobody was ever so interested in what I was doing that they wanted to steal it. Not even the Russians. It clear the Russians should have hired your former employees.
>Hey, great reply; I like all of it !
>I put some additions below :
>
>>I don't think source piracy is an issue for most because most of us write custom applications: that is, applications that are specifically designed for a particular business & business problem. Most of us do not write standard applications that have a value for other customers. Sure I wish I could turn that asset management program I have written into a standard application package but if I could then the EDS would have already done it <g>, and I'd be out of a job. Come to think of it I am out of a job but that's neither here nor there!
>
>Frankfurt is only 5 hours away from here ! {g} but see somehere down.
>
>>
>>OTOH there are some VFP people who write applications that are not custom software and for them protection of source code may be an issue. But even for many of them there isn't much to fear. How are you going to get a copy of my Sales Information System? The company that has it isn't going to let you look at it. I'm not going to give you a copy either. VFP companies are too small to have their own industrial espionage departments!
>
>Small misstake ? The app runs at the customers' site, and there a consultant of any kind is contracted-in. He likes what he sees, does a refox, and when time comes ...
>
>>Consider commodity products like the VFP frameworks, or West Winds Web Connection, that are sold to many customers. These people ship the source code. Are they worried about source code piracy? They would just ambush the pirate outside of the convetion hall and give them a good beating!
>
>Fully agree. However, this framework for us is just a rather small part of our complete app. Think of the app you are building on such a framework, and your app is soon bigger than the framework. Well, in our quantities it will. So, it's only partly about the framework, but more the logic of the app around it.
>
>>Idea theft is even more irrelevant. Open source is very good for us, and more chances to see other peoples software would make all of our software better. Custom developers don't get much chance to see their competitors products at all which is a tremendous disadvantage for the whole community. Compare the situation with the internet browsers or word processors. Anytime a good idea appears in one then the others immediately copy it. Because of that these products have evolved and improved at a much faster pace than in custom development. The unavoidable consequence is that the we in custom development take most of our user interface ideas from off the shelf products regardless of whether they are appropriate to the job at hand. e.g. Microsoft Outlook looks good so we make our software look like Outlook.
>
>Well, this is exactly why you can stay in Frankfurt anyway :)
>Just have to work out some things, and than we go !
>
>>PS does anyone know of software piracy of FoxPro code that has financially damaged the author? If so I will eat my words. Actually I will anyhow because it's dinner time and I'm quite peckish.
>
>Stop your dinner !!
>
The before-mentioned consultant-thing really happened to me; the client even knew all along, but informed me after they fired the consultant after thieving from their place. Happy meal.
>5 years ago I found out that a complete company worked on the same concepts and logic of our ERP-package, which is just "too strange" to be "invented" again; it appeard that this company was run by 3 former employees of mine, which left 6 years ago. Happy meals again.
>One month ago all of our servers were stolen, yeah but one which just didn't contain any relevant info on app, commercial contact, the law-suit of the previous point and email-traffic. Strange huh ? so much for desert.
>
>:-))
>
>So here you are;
>As I said "I've been there" so I'm rather aggressively typing here (so much for the keyboard). The second point above and its lawsuit really is about tenths of millions (doesnt matter what currency as long as it's not BEF, YEN or lires).
>So of course, I will be unique for having it all together at the same time. But it can happen, and once it happens to you you're sorry not having anticipated while your could (we didn't have this alarm system in the office too, so this is ignorancy).
>
>No matter what, a better reply than yours coudn't be expected.
>And again, I like the further topics very much. Thanks James.
>Kind regards,
>(hungry)
James Beerbower
James Beerbower Enterprises
Frankfurt, Deutschland
