Ask Slashdot: How To Work On Source Code Without Having the Source Code?

occamboy writes: Perhaps the ultimate conundrum!

I've taken over a software project in an extremely specialized area that needs remediation in months, so it'll be tough to build an internal team quickly enough. The good news is that there are outside software engineering groups that have exactly the right experience and good reputations. The bad news is that my management is worried about letting source code out of the building. Seems to me that unless I convince the suits otherwise, my options are to:

1) have all contractors work on our premises — a pain for everyone, and they might not want to do it at all

2) have them remote in to virtual desktops running on our premises — much of our software is sub-millisecond-response real-time systems on headless hardware, so they'll need to at least run executables locally, and giving access to executables but not sources seems like it will have challenges. And if the desktop environment goes down, more than a dozen people are frozen waiting for a fix. Also, I'd imagine that if a remote person really wanted the sources, they could video the sources as they scrolls by.

I'll bet there are n better ways to do this, and I'm hoping that there are some smart Slashdotters who'll let me know what they are; please help!

Comments

An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[Joe_Dragon]

An NDA works and makes for Target to sue if the code gets out.

Re:An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[gstoddart]

It kinda sounds like they are outsourcing to somewhere that they think an NDA will be impossible to enforce, or where the source will be leaked and they won't be able to prove anything due.

Then .. they're doing it wrong.

If you think either of those things, why the hell would you hire them? That would be idiotic, if not outright irresponsible.

Re:An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[arth1]

An NDA works and makes for Target to sue if the code gets out.

That works great unless the managers look to save money by outsourcing to countries where such lawsuits would go nowhere, and contractor companies disband/reband at the first sign of trouble.

Re:An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[cayenne8]

Hey...sometimes you just gotta work on site.

NDA's are nice...but I've seen them ignored and nothing much could be done about it, unless your company is a BIG one with some powerful attorney's and deep pockets.

So, I'd say the simplest thing would be to have them work on site. Sounds like with the fast timing requirements, it might actually just be better for them to work and test ON the machines that will be running it, to make sure it runs fast enough....?

Re:An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone is willing to ignore your NDA, then they're also willing to walk off with a copy of the code. If you can't trust them, don't hire them.

Re:An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[ShanghaiBill]

If someone is willing to ignore your NDA, then they're also willing to walk off with a copy of the code.

This is assuming the source code is actually worth something to someone else. Most companies have a wildly inflated idea of what their code would be worth to a competitor. In general, your competitors have no interest in seeing your crappy code, and are too busy with their own problems.

I once consulted for a company that decided to "open source" some of their code. There were objections that they were giving away their "crown jewels", but they went ahead and did it. A year later, they had this many downloads of the code: 0.

Re:An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[jellomizer]

Well more to the point, no matter what happens the damage is done.
Source Code isn't as much of a threat to the organization as it is people who understand what it is doing.

From the sound of the story, it seems like they are doing high-frequency-trading, and if the source is released then competitors can just start up their own competing company, and you loose out on your competitive advantage. However source code is usually minor part of the detail. It is when people understand what is going on and why it does it. Then they can go ahead and make a better version using the principles they learned maintaining your code.

I have worked across a lot of organizations and I never copy the source code to my personal devices, and when I am done with the project I remove whatever I have. However what I learned from working with the code is where I am at an advantage. I find new ways to solve problems, I keep track of it, and flag it in my mind as a better way to approach a problem. I learn and get better. If I were to just take the code and make a competing company, I wouldn't have myself a real advantage, as I may not understand it.

Re:An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[pla]

NDA's are nice...but I've seen them ignored and nothing much could be done about it, unless your company is a BIG one with some powerful attorney's and deep pockets.

Free hint, corporate America - I don't need the actual code in-hand to walk away with anything actually worth stealing from your code.

The implementation amounts to nothing more than mere documentation, to a skilled programmer. The underlying concepts hold all the value, and once I've seen them, you can't make me un-see them. "Oh, what a cool way to schedule garbage collection without sacrificing soft-realtime I/O responsiveness! I'll have to remember that one!" - Done. Your one jewel-amongst-the-dross just became mine.

So whether enforceable or not, the NDA has a hell of a lot more practical use here, as opposed to trying to control physical access to your preeeciousss source code.

Re:An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[Anonymous Coward]

A year later, they had this many downloads of the code: 0.

4,294,967,296 downloads? That's quite impressive!

Re:An NDA works and makes for Target to sue

[The-Ixian]

Any sort of remote access to do work is basically the same as letting the code out of the building

I can attest to this.

I have worked for large corporations that utilize proxied access to the Internet and locked down removable media.

It was still trivially easy to circumvent by using PuTTY to open an SSH tunnel over 443 to my home network, then using port forwarding to open an RDP session to an internal Windows box (complete with file transfer and drive redirection).

I really just wanted to see if it could be done more than anything else.

PuTTY turns out to be on the approved executable list of every place I have worked.... Hey, if you give me the tools.... *shrug*

No problem ...

[gstoddart]

I'll bill you at triple my usual rate to pretend to have fixed your code, and you continue to pretend I could have done so without seeing your code.

If you quadruple my rate, I won't even admit to ever have done so.

I think it sounds perfectly equitable.

More seriously, that is what contracts are for. If you can't write a contract and hire people you can trust, you can't accomplish this task. At the end of the day, they'll see your code, and it will enter their brain.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, this is what NDAs with big penalties are for.

Have them work on the premises.

[91degrees]

Speaking as a contractor, I'll work on site if you insist. You're the boss. Provide me with equipment and coffee, and I'll suck it up.

We're whores. We want your money. We don't care if your demands are stupid, as long as we can meet them.

Re:Have them work on the premises.

[gstoddart]

I mostly agree, except you forgot one thing ... but it will cost you.

Re:Have them work on the premises.

[cat_jesus]

Right. As a consultant I will tell you when your requirements are stupid and costly. If you still insist on me working inefficiently it's your dime. I'll happily take more of your money to do it the wrong way and I will make sure my recommendations are clear in the documentation.

You pretty much covered the options

[enjar]

You can do the onsite thing, but you are right in that you will limit the groups which may be interested, and also you may need to pay more as the group may include the cost of hotel stays, food, etc in their quote for doing the work. So you can limit your potential personnel and it can cost more.

If you do the remote thing, they don't have to log into virtual desktops, they can log into real hardware just as well if performance is an issue.

Also, "I need you to fix my source code but you can't see it" ... that's kind of a paradox.

And regarding your source code, set up a NDA. If the group you contract with is a quality group with a good reputation, this shouldn't be a problem. Actually I hate to break it to your management, but unless you are doing an air gap/search of employees entering a special lab where they have no means of getting the code off (floppies, USB keys, etc), your source code has likely left the building one way or another, for good or ill.

You can also tell your management that if they want to do this all internally, etc that the timeline needs to be extended. They are giving you legitimately contradictory constraints. Not that this is uncommon (constraints conflict all the time), but you need to know where the flexbility is.

Re:You pretty much covered the options

[Tjp($)pjT]

I have done some forensics work in software. The most secure setup was a room with cameras, the computers in a locked box, PS/2 keyboard and mouse with attached cords that go into the locked box, VGA only monitor, and a printer filled with pre-numbered sheets of paper. I emptied all my electronics including watch, no calculator, no phone, etc. Allowed items were a pen/pencil and notepad. I was escorted into the room (roughly 1500 miles from my office) the paper was loaded by the escort. When I wanted to leave the room I pressed a buzzer button. The escort collected the printouts, and the paper supply. briefly looked to see if there were obvious missing pages. They can't see my notepad, and my instructions were to write small, though the cameras were not supposed to see the monitor or desk surface. After their side examined the pages I printed out, they allowed a lawyer to pick up the copies, as I had to review the printouts in the lawyers offices and not personally ever posses them. Under those conditions with a 10 hour work day (8 onsite, 2 writing up the days notes onto a computer at the hotel room) it is amazing how little code can be reviewed in a day. They did allow tools of our choice to be installed on the computers at their expense. And they installed the software versions we said were suspect in source form.

Under these conditions, if you forced them on developers, you'd be paying them what I was paid for forensic investigation, somewhere around $250-300 an hour if you want top quality people. And they will burnout in short order, so keep a queue filled with replacements. I could do that for only short bursts at a time.

Even then, I could have copied the code onto paper line by line. And in some cases did for short segments that showed infringement.

In even the harshest of conditions code can still leak. But your biggest weak point is if your network is not air gapped and you use source code control, keeping the social engineering aspect in check so you aren't hacked. For contractors and employees, only hire ones you trust and depend on NDAs and integrity. And a VPN that is appropriately encrypted is like working in the office. Supply the computers and you can install monitoring software on them, and USB management software to provide gentle no-no-no reminders as they try to work they way they normally would.

I suspect you're doomed to failure :(

[tatman]

" so it'll be tough to build an internal team quickly enough "

This smells of failure. Contractors aren't going to get up to speed any faster than internal resources (sans technology specifics like expertise in a language). Our management tried the same thing: hire contractors for a short term (less than 3 months), hurry up scenario. Except it took a month to interview and get the contractors on site. Much of the 3 months of contractors time was spent to get their environments setup, work with IT to configure permissions and the contractors themselves to learn the complex product enough to contribute. Not to mention the loss of focus of the internal team assisting the the contractors.

I would spend more effort coming up with a realistic plan that has a chance at success rather than trying to meet a date that is not going to be met. Build a plan that includes a mix of internal an external resources. I would include time to hire contractors (remembering that background checks take time) plus all of the other activities that will consume time away from producing the finished product.

Re:I suspect you're doomed to failure :(

[gstoddart]

" so it'll be tough to build an internal team quickly enough "

This smells of failure.

It is failure, but it's unrealized failure, and management may not understand how bad of a failure it is. Having a company which no longer employs the resources to fix and maintain their products means someone has already harmed the company beyond easy repair and failed to do anything about it.

If you need this remediated within months, you're probably months past the point where you should have done something about it.

No longer having the skillset to maintain your product means you are so deeply screwed it isn't funny. You're just pretending you still have that product.

So, which is it? They laid off everybody who could do this? Or they pissed off everybody who could do this and they left on their own?

Because, really, if you don't have the internal skills to fix it ... how can you possibly be qualified to evaluate, hire, and oversee the external skills in that impossible timeline?

This is a pretty epic fail ... and in my experience that means management usually dropped the ball along the way. This is like a company making rocket engines suddenly realizing they don't have any rocket scientists.

What if you give the suits what they want?

[generic_screenname]

Post a job ad, with a caveat in the description that developers can't see the code they are supposed to work on. Report back when you don't get any results. Have some conversations with recruiters and candidates, and document the WTF reactions while you're at it. It may also be worth getting different quotes from the team you wanted to hire: one at a rate with reasonable accommodations that allow them to do their jobs, and another where they will have to deal with endless BS because management doesn't trust anyone. The truth of the matter is that someone really, really wants to target your company, they will. An employee could steal something. You could be hacked. A very determined assailant, given enough time and resources, will get to you. There are tradeoffs made to account for this possibility, while allowing enough latitude for people to do their jobs. It's the same with this group of contractors. If they really, really wanted to steal from you, then they could, and no amount of legal procedure would stop them. If they have built up a good reputation, then they probably won't do this. At the end of the day, this gets down to managing the fear level of your superiors, and it may mean letting something go undone until they come around to letting go a little bit.

Cameras are so, so tiny these days

[Medievalist]

You cannot physically enforce security of code sources you are allowing people to see - unless you are going to have them work entirely naked, under constant physical observation, with full body cavity searches every time they enter or leave the workroom.

Hire someone trustworthy, pay them well, and have them work on-site. That is the path to success. Anything else is almost guaranteed to create the situation you're trying to avoid; paranoia breeds dissent and distrust breeds subterfuge.

Can't have your cake and eat it, too.

[Drewdad]

You cannot simultaneously keep something secret and share it.

This question really doesn't make sense... How do you have a highly-valuable source code repository and simultaneously require external developers to modify/maintain it? How was the code developed initially? Did you have contractors develop it initially, and then have some kind of falling out? Did you have a mass walkout of your staff?

Document the costs and benefits, management decide

[raymorris]

Maybe the cost to have people work on-site is worth it, maybe not. Management said they wanted to keep the code on-site, and management wants to manage costs. Management can decide whether working on-site is important enough to them that they want to spend the additional money, after you tell them how much it will cost them.

So estimate the costs for each option, then let management decide - do they want to spend three times as much to have people on-site, given that there is little to no benefit? Are they happy with remote desktop, given the costs? Let management decide their own priorities.

you should rewrite it in node.js

[slashdice]

node.js doesn't block so it's faster than c. And since it's javascript, you can find programmers anywhere. Like that homeless guy holding a "callback(){ return food; }" sign. Underneath the stench is a 10x webscale javascript ninja that can rewrite your code in es6 javascript.