What's the best way to protect proprietary HTML/CSS/JavaScript?
I am writing a robust, scalable, and fairly complex website engine using HTMl, CSS, and JavaScript. I don't want it to get ripped off, and I'm wondering if there's any way to protect the source from being viewed in the client.
I am particularly concerned about the JavaScript, and I'm wondering if I can protect it by hosting it in seperate files that cannot be viewed directly. I have full control of my web server, and I can alter any settings to accomodate.
Answer
Do the exact opposite, release your code as opensource with an MIT/GPL license. Attach your (business) name to the code and be known as the first to create application X. Reputation gets you much farther then futile attempts to "protecting your code".
- JS/Html/CSS is usually quite easy to backward engineer, they don't need to look at your code at all.
- Chances are, your JS inovations already exists and was written in 2001 by someone else.
- The more complex the code, the harder it is to steal the intellectual property, especially if you opensource it.
There's really no sane reason to protect your code where JS/CSS/HTML is concerned, the best you can do is protect your business logic by keeping that on the backend.
Prime example, I could write my own implementation of CKEditor (a lot of people do just that) but it's a heck of a lot easier to just use CKEditor and everyone knows what it is, who wrote it etc.
Or take google maps as example, there are a lot of clones around, but there's only one real google maps. Heck, others had written a maps implementation before google, but google maps is more reknowned.
I could go on with lots of examples why trying to protect your code is not only silly, but actually not smart... Protecting business logic is one thing, but you actually have more to gain by going public with fancy smancy frontend code...