How do I prevent somebody from copying the code for my Firebase-powered application?

Question

If I were to make a 100% client-side app with Firebase as the backend, how would I prevent somebody from taking all my static files, changing the Firebase references to point to their own Firebase, and releasing a competing product?

Answer 1

This is technically a possibility (there's no way to prevent it outright), but it isn't isolated to Firebase. With the move towards rich, client-side web apps, more and more of the "interesting" application logic lives in the client and could be examined or copied. However there are a few mitigating factors:

• The most direct way to prevent this is through code obfuscation/minification (e.g. using something like UglifyJS). This results in JavaScript that can't be reasonably understood or modified. The vast majority of web apps use this technique.
• Firebase lets you write fully client-side apps without writing any server code, but it certainly doesn't force this upon you. There are server clients for Node.JS and the JVM so that if you do have proprietary logic that can't be public, you can easily run it on your own servers.
• In general, there's a lot more to a product than the code. :-) (Brand, marketing, customer acquisition, and most importantly, all of the experience and knowledge you get from building the product)