Re:Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that can automate any ...
by dkthehuman on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @10:43PM
(#29261767)
Oh, don't be fooled — many of my friends have had to go through much worse onboarding experiences to get to what it is right now. ;) Appreciate the kind words!
The two pieces that make it harder for someone to simply copy the extension code and run it themselves is (1) Javascript minification and (2) parts that talk to a server.
Someone can try to reverse engineer the calls to a server and run their own, but that's often more work than most people are willing to go through and it's made harder by the client code being minified.
I wish it were possible to open source extensions without running into this problem because I like sharing things I've built (https://github.com/dkthehuman/), but doing so effectively kills the possibility of building a business on top of it unless you maintain two code bases (one free and one paid) at which point it's more trouble than it's worth IMO.
Whenever I see extensions like this, it does make me wonder something which I've never fully understood: Given that so much of it runs client-side, what's the state of the art nowadays in terms of preventing someone from essentially "stealing" your extension. I've come across some extensions in the past -- even ones that were paid for and part of a business -- where it was clear that it would've been trivial to simply copy the extension code and run it on my own. How do you prevent folks from doing that?