How can I prevent someone from copying code for my Firebase application?

Question

If I made a 100% client-side application with Firebase as a backend, how would I prevent someone from taking all my static files by changing Firebase links to point to their own Firebase and releasing a competing product?

Answer 1

This is technically an opportunity (there is no way to prevent it directly), but it is not isolated from Firebase. With the transition to rich web client applications, more and more “interesting” application logic lives in the client and can be checked or copied. However, there are several mitigating factors:

• The most direct way to prevent this is through obfuscation / minimization of the code (for example, using something like UglifyJS ). This results in JavaScript that cannot be intelligently understood or modified. The vast majority of web applications use this technique.
• Firebase allows you to write fully client applications without writing server code, but this certainly does not force you to do this. There are server clients for Node.JS and JVM, so if you have proprietary logic that cannot be shared, you can easily run it on your own servers.
• In general, there is much more to the product than code. :-) (Brand, marketing, customer acquisition and, most importantly, all the experience and knowledge that you gain from creating the product).