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> GitHub chooses to encrypt their source code to prevent modifications. Our experience at GitLab is that customer modifications don't cause a lot of extra load

> GitHub chooses to encrypt their source code to prevent modifications. Our experience at GitLab is that customer modifications don't cause a lot of extra load on our support team. But of course that might be caused by having different architectures and customers. Most of the companies I have worked at that require code obfuscation and / or encryption do so because they believe someone will steal their source and re-use it or at least discover how it works and re-implement it in an attempt to steal customers (typically they suggest China in all of those). I'm not sure what GitHub's reasoning is but I hadn't heard of someone doing it to prevent additional support load. That's an interesting an angle I hadn't thought of.

mcintyre1994 10y ago
Github use a key for their obfuscation : "This obfuscation is intended to discourage GitHub Enterprise customers from making modifications to the VM. We know this 'encryption' is easily broken." So that's probably why he assumed their reasoning was to do with reducing support by avoiding modifications by customers.
- marcinkuzminski 10y ago
  Interesting, from our point of view at RhodeCode, allowing modification of code often benefited our support team. When testing some real edge cases, we were able to inject additional debug code to pinpoint the problems. It actually helps IMHO. Furthermore ability to add a patch to the code to fix a bug within minutes could be a selling point for some types of customers.
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    After doing support for folks who used code I developed where they modified it without telling me, I could see the merit of both ways. I've spent days remotely debugging an issue before realizing a customers actually did modify our product when they kept insisting it was never modified (he had no idea). So I could see it working out both ways. I know one of the companies I dealt with who obfuscated their code could send us a debug version for testing / debugging a specific issue then we'd revert back to the release version. It's a little more complex but I kinda like that model. But as you said it works great for you :)

mcintyre1994 10y ago

Github use a key for their obfuscation : "This obfuscation is intended to discourage GitHub Enterprise customers from making modifications to the VM. We know this 'encryption' is easily broken." So that's probably why he assumed their reasoning was to do with reducing support by avoiding modifications by customers.

marcinkuzminski 10y ago
Interesting, from our point of view at RhodeCode, allowing modification of code often benefited our support team. When testing some real edge cases, we were able to inject additional debug code to pinpoint the problems. It actually helps IMHO. Furthermore ability to add a patch to the code to fix a bug within minutes could be a selling point for some types of customers.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  After doing support for folks who used code I developed where they modified it without telling me, I could see the merit of both ways. I've spent days remotely debugging an issue before realizing a customers actually did modify our product when they kept insisting it was never modified (he had no idea). So I could see it working out both ways. I know one of the companies I dealt with who obfuscated their code could send us a debug version for testing / debugging a specific issue then we'd revert back to the release version. It's a little more complex but I kinda like that model. But as you said it works great for you :)