Hacker News Reader

Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

Your secret server sauce could show up at another company with source code, documentation, comments and everything.

If you rely on "secret server sauce", you are probably sunk anyway, since a half-decent reverse engineer can probably replicate your business just by looking at it as a black box system from a client's perspective.

Many times they'll even use your logos and deliver a lesser product based on your brand name.

View on HN

"a half-decent reverse engineer can probably replicate your business just by looking at it as a black box system "

Think of a program with business logic spanning millions of lines, with intricate detail spent on lots of domain specific automation steps.

I'm actually at a bit of a loss for words that somebody thinks a business can be reverse engineered just by looking at it as a black box system. There are so many intricacies with cash flow forecasting and management alone, requiring deep understanding of each market's nuance and settlement mechanisms, simply to pay the bills. That's not even to get revenue in the door. Sorry, but most businesses aren't software programs, they're social systems and local contracts that were socially agreed upon to get something done in a politically acceptable way.

Or even relatively small secret sauce that took thousands of iterations by geniuses. This guy seems to be asserting that Google may as well just give up because they need their algorithms to be secret.

At this point I can't help but think that he made an assertion based on a misconception (someone stealing your source code == someone stealing your idea) early in the thread and is just digging himself deeper trying to stick with it.

You really can't see a difference between needing to reverse engineer something and just getting the source with no strings attached?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com