Protection of Proprietary Source Code?

[Former Member]

I wanted to have a Frank Discussion of a major issue we see as a Partner that concerns us in regards to developing large projects for vertical industries within ByDesign itself. And that is Intellectual Property Protection.  As it stands currently with in the SDK there (as far as I know) is no way to Protect code which has been developed from a customer or another partner opening modifying or otherwise using as long as they have access to that tenant and can provide access to the PDI_Development Work-centers (and the studio installs).  What is the solution for this... Is there a way to lock partner developed solutions from being opened?

I know this was the point of the Scalable solutions which the Studio has done away with .. So what is the current solution..

[Former Member]

So here we are 2 years later and I am still curious on this issue,.

[stefankrauth]

Hi William,

sometimes it's good to bring something up again The IP is defined by the source system. If you develop on the partner tenant and deploy the solution to the customer test tenant, the Intelectual Property is at you, because you have the original solution.

If you start your development on the customer test tenant, the IP is with the customer.

But this is only the legal situation (disclaimer: no guarantee, I'm not from the legal department).

The byd/c4c system supports multiple partners. This means when your user is assinged to your partner, you can only see solutions that got created with your partner ID (you or a colleague of you).

If someone with another partner ID logs on, he would not see your solution. So each partner can only see his own solutions.

I'm not exactly sure how this user to partner ID assignment is done. I'll try to find more details on this.

I'm more familiar with the C4C world, where the partner ID is the customer ID and all developments are starting on the customer tenant. There of course every partner can see the solutions. But this is okay as the IP is with the customer and the customer often wants to have multiple partners working on one AddOn.

Best Regards,
Stefan

[Former Member]

While I understand the "legal" IP there really is nothing enforcing this, which really is a hurdle when deciding to do a large multi customer projects to fit in a vertical.

While the model you describe is great for one-offs and the such, I am interested to hear about this "Partner ID" aspect and how this can relate to a solution template that has then been imported and tweaked for a customer.

[stefankrauth]

It doesn't matter if you develop or deploy or import a solution. Whatever you do will be done in your "Partner Space".

Think of it as a room for you as a partner, where nobody else has access but you.

In C4C, there is a customer room, where all partners meet and collaborate.

The question is who creates the rooms and who assigns the users to the different rooms. I know how it works technically, but I don't know who is doing it in the tenant lifecycle. I'll follow up on this.

[georgk]

Hi Stefan,

I would also be interested in how partners can protect their source code (e.g. of MCS). I understand the legal aspects of IP, but I am not yet fully familiar with the partnerID you are describing.

When accessing the C4C or ByD systems of our customer we use users that are provided to us by our customers. These have a "service provider" business partner as basis for their user but I'm not familiar with the assignment of these partner IDs.

Therefore I'm wondering how this actually works... If there is no assignment of the partner ID to the user - does the partner ID come from the solution?

Is this the feature "Customer ID" that we can set in our partner development tenants and which is also part of the solutions?

Thanks for your help and best regards,

Georg

[Former Member]

Hi Georg,

for MCS this is solved by the MCS installation key.

If a user has the MCS development workcenter assigned, upon login using the Studio, the user will be asked for the MCS installation key.

No key means no access to the solution if you do not give the key away, noone else can access your MCS.

Best regards,

Ludger Bünger

--

Custom development with All4Cloud.de

[stefankrauth]

Hi Georg,

I meanwhile found out that the whole concept I explained is only applied to a partner development tenant. There the partner can switch to a customer namespace and on his own system he can then develop for this customer without seeing solution he has developed for other customers.

On customer side, the partner ID is equal the customer ID and therefore all parties working on the customers system can see each others work.

However, I'm not yet familiar with MCS.

Best Regards,
Stefan

[HorstSchaude]

Hello Stefan,

Ludger described pretty well the situation for MCS:

You are requested to provide an installation key and you will only see that solution which matches the key.

You wont see other MCS.

Bye,

   Horst

[Former Member]

Will Partners ever be given the Ability to create a MCS without the intervention Of SAP?

[HorstSchaude]

Hello William,

We are here the architects and developers who do not make that decisions. 

If a lot of customers request this from their Partner Contacts, it may happen.

So it's up to you.

     Horst