Everyone once in a while, you hear about a developer working in a shop with a draconian security policy. In these places, they don't have root access to their own machines, and it takes a call to the IT department to get even the most basic software installed. Internet access is highly regulated, and doled out on a "need only" basis. USB drives and personal laptops are strictly forbidden. Forget waterboarding, this kind of torture goes beyond all sense of decency.
To all you CTO's out there who think this is a good idea, read this well: If you don't even trust your employees enough to give them access to their own machines, you have nothing to worry about. Nobody wants your over-engineered, untested, skanky-ass spaghetti code. Nobody outside your organization could even understand it, much less steal it. The reason is, nobody in your organization cares about that code. You've made it clear that you don't care about them, and they're returning the favor by producing the most worthless product they possibly can. The most a potential thief ever do with it is glance through the source, scoffing at what he saw, and claiming that he could re-write it in 6 months. Take it from me, your Intellectual Property (ha!) is perfectly safe.
To all the CTO's who may be considering such a move, let me say this: Anyone in your organization who wants to steal your source code already has. They did it on their first day. The only reasonable recourse it to sue the pants off them if they try to distribute it.
Intellectual property isn't like gold...it loses value when it's locked away. Instead of spending lots of time and money instituting complex security procedures that slow people down and make them feel like criminals, why not hire some people you can actually trust, and give them what they need to get the job done?
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