Access DB Protection - Any ideas..??

[Tony]

Hi,

I am working for a large corporation currently and I am nearing the end of
designing a large Access DB that will be used by a whole sector of the
business.

As I am due to leave the company soon to work elswhere, I wondered whether I
could put a peice of code or something in the database that will stop it
functioning at a certain date - say in 3 months time.

The thinkiing behind this is, of course, to makes my situation far more
tenable - as at the moment feel I will just leave my d/base to them when I
go with no reward for all the work that has gone into it. Maybe I should
just copywright it!!

Any thoughts please...

Many Thanks

TONY

 

[Cheryl Fischer]

Depending on intellectual property and copyright laws in your country, your
relationship with the corporation (employee or contractor/consultant), the
genesis of the database (development to the specifications provided by the
corporation or independent development to your own specifications), you may
or may not have the right to copyright this work or make it unusable by the
corporation at some future date.

I strongly suggest that you get legal advice from an attorney familiar with
intellectual property and copyright law in your location before you take any
action that could jeopardize your reputation and relationship with the
corporation or get you sued.

 

[Pavel Romashkin]

I can not offer a solution - only some thoughts.
If the company paid you to design that database as part of your job, you
should not try to cripple the product, or they could sue you.
If they did not specifically pay you for this, they may still have the
right to the database if you built it in your work time and on the
company computer, using their licensed copy of Access.
If you built it in your spare time using your own resources, you should
negotiate a price and write up a contract to transfer the program to the
company without resorting to unpleasant surprises for the users.
I think this is no way to make friends or earn continuing business.
Technically, anyone with knowledge of VBA will be able to disable your
time bomb, unless you distribute your DB as an MDE project, which is
probably not the case for a large split design database like yours.
Pavel

 

[Mark Reed]

This may not be the response you're after, *BUT*,

It is up to you to negotiate your terms and conditions of employment before
you embark on a project. If you're not happy now then you should have
thought a bit more about your situation earlier. After saying that I know
how you feel. I built Windows images for a privately owned multi-million
pound company, it filled me with immense pride and at the same time a little
annoyance that a business as substantial as that was using my skills every
minute of every day, albeit locked into the build.

My advice to you would be to finish off the project to professionally and
not leave any bugs behind. Get the job down onto your CV. The business above
rang me back a couple of months after I'd finished and I had a network
managers job (on contract) for twelve months on top of what I originally
signed up for.

I honestly hope you do the right thing.

Mark. mcse.

 

[John Vinson]

Hi,

I am working for a large corporation currently and I am nearing the end of
designing a large Access DB that will be used by a whole sector of the
business.

As I am due to leave the company soon to work elswhere, I wondered whether I
could put a peice of code or something in the database that will stop it
functioning at a certain date - say in 3 months time.

I have to agree with the other opinions in this thread. In most
jurisdictions, if you're an employee of the company and building the
database as part of your job, the database belongs to the company -
*they* can copyright it if they wish, but *you* cannot legally do so.
And giving them a product which you know to be defective (an unusable
product would be considered so) would be both illegal and unethical.

That said... you can certainly put in a timebomb, but a developer as
good as you or better could find it and defuse it, either before it
goes off or from a backup after their production system goes bonkers.
And you'ld be left with a very annoyed former employer who can still
use the application.

 

[Tony]

Hi,

Thanks for all the replies..on reflection...the right thing to do would be
to negotiate with the company...I have done this in my own time on my own PC
and it certainly was not part of my job remit as I am a Transport manager!

However (and perhaps rather naively) I have shown as many people as I could
as I was very proud of it.

We live and learn!

Thanks ..

TONY

 

[Chris]

As soon as you copied it onto the company machines, that
could be construed as giving it to them. Consulting legal
advice (if they don't negotiate with you) is the best bet.


Chris

-----Original Message-----
Hi,

Thanks for all the replies..on reflection...the right thing to do would be
to negotiate with the company...I have done this in my own time on my own PC
and it certainly was not part of my job remit as I am a Transport manager!

However (and perhaps rather naively) I have shown as many people as I could
as I was very proud of it.

We live and learn!

Thanks ..

TONY


am nearing the end
of elswhere, I wondered
whether I

I have to agree with the other opinions in this thread. In most
jurisdictions, if you're an employee of the company and building the
database as part of your job, the database belongs to the company -
*they* can copyright it if they wish, but *you* cannot legally do so.
And giving them a product which you know to be defective (an unusable
product would be considered so) would be both illegal and unethical.

That said... you can certainly put in a timebomb, but a developer as
good as you or better could find it and defuse it, either before it
goes off or from a backup after their production system goes bonkers.
And you'ld be left with a very annoyed former employer who can still
use the application.

.