Sharing is caring, thanks for your code, but....

[Thomas Okken]

(01-21-2018 04:04 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  

(01-21-2018 03:34 PM)pier4r Wrote:  At least for what I understood.

Many years ago I was involved in some software development where the contract stated that the source code had to be supplied to the client. As the owners of the little company which subcontracted me on this project really didn't like their clients to have the source code (which was their main capital so to say) I got the task to make it as unreadable as possible. So I wrote a little program (in C or FORTRAN, can't remember) which stripped the source code from all comments, renamed all variables and functions to "VAR001"..."VAR999" (with the numbers in random order and leaving gaps between the numbers) and "FUN001" to "FUN999". By that the contract was fulfilled (the clients were able to compile the code themselves) but the code itself was next to useless because figuring out what it did and how would have been more expensive than contracting us again for future development.

I guess your customer didn't really care about that code, or they were too nontechnical to realize they were being swindled... because that sabotaged version of the code you're describing there does not satisfy any sane interpretation of "supplying the code" that I can think of. You were certainly not handing over the code that you actually worked on.