Secure your source code from third party?

[Jeppe Sommer]

I have developed a web application for a customer. The customer wants to have the possibility to futher develop on the application in the future. If I don�t want a third party (another IT developer company) to obtain the source code, then how can I give the code to my customer, without the possibility for the customer or a third party to see and make change in the source code?

If I give the customer only the class files, they can decompile the files, right?

What about if I give them a .jar file. Then they can unpack the files, right?

What can I do?

[Steven Bell]

You can obfuscate your code to make it harder, but there is nothing you can do AFAIK to stop them.

[Lin Feng]

The only way I can see to solve your problem is to sign an aggrement with your customer about how to use the source code. If they want to maintain / do future development by themself , they need the source code.

If you do not even give your customer class files, how are they going to use your application? :-)

One thing to prevent decompile is to use obfuscate tools. Check this out
http://www.retrologic.com/retroguard-faq.html


Lin

[Jeppe Sommer]

Well, I could host the web application for them...

What about setting a kind of password protection on the jar file?

[Steven Bell]

If you host the web app then they wouldn't be able to get the source. Of course then you have to deal with supporting the web app as well as being worried about the reliability and uptime of the server. Depends on how much of a commitment you want to make to it.

Password protecting the jar won't work because then it won't run, at least as far as I know.