Recently, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) sent out a tweet asking for participants in a new community group to explore solutions for protecting web app source code.
To understand why this issue is important and controversial, you need to know that since the beginning of the web, it’s been possible for anyone to view (and “borrow”) anyone else’s HTML, CSS, images, and JavaScript just by viewing the source of a web page. You can do this now by pressing control-U in most web browsers on Windows, or option-command-U on Mac.
If you’re a web developer, chances are that you’ve learned a lot over the years by looking at the source code to figure out how someone else achieved some cool effect or solved a particular problem.
In the past, if there was something that a web page author wanted to hide from the world, he or she could use a plugin (such as Adobe Flash) or server-side code (such as PHP) to make it impossible for the general world to see.
But, with the new client-side, and plugin-free world of HTML5, many people feel that we need a new solution for protecting source code.
On the other hand, the web has always been about sharing knowledge. In my online class, I often encourage students to view each others’ work and work of other web developers as a great tool for learning. It would be a shame if a new source code protection mechanism made it impossible for web developers to view the work of other web developers (something that we’ve all taken for granted for the last 20 years).
In the interest of helping to sort out this issue in a way that works well for business as well as web developers, I and Minnick Web Services will be participating in this community group. If you’re interested in this topic, I encourage you to get involved as well. It’s free to join, and open to anyone.
Do you have an opinion on web app source code protection? Join us on Facebook and discuss!
-Chris