The first clue to middle management that something was terribly wrong came when Bill Farun, CEO, stormed into Jim’s office demanding to know why some 12 year old in Prague had our source code.
The answer to that question is as humorous as it is scary. Round about 6 months ago Jim, one of those managers who clawed his way to the top because of his incompetence, had just returned from a lunch meeting with a friend. He called us all into his office, and there we sat, desite the cramped quarters and struggling ventilation, listening in horror as he proceeded to tell us all how BitTorrent would save our failing development life cycle.
It appears that his friend had describe the joys of working with a version control system called Bit Keeper and the cool ways they were using BitTorrent to reduce bandwidth costs of shipping huge ISOs to their customers. Somehow Jim came to the conclusion that these were two forms of a similar product and instead of paying for a Bit Keeper license he decided that we’d use the free and totally cool bittorrent.
Cast aside now the notion that we’d had already worked up and submitted a migration plan from CVS to Subversion. I’m convinced that he accidently deleted the plan and wasn’t willing to admit it. Every time someone would suggest that Subversion was a better choice he would go off on a rant. He even went as far to Google for complaints about subversion and quote them back to us every time it came up.
Somewhere about 3 months ago I think Jim finally realized that the P2P app BitTorrent and the version control software Bit Keeper were not anywhere near the same product but his pride and ego dictated that he continue to force the decision upon us. His demeanor changed but his resolve and determination didn’t budge.
Just two months ago Jim finalized his plan to use BitTorrent as a version control system. It involved a publicly reachable tracker, thankfully hosted on our server but in the DMZ, a few ugly bash scripts, and a code of ethics. “Ethics!?” I screamed, looking at the other developers, “Did he say ethics?”. Then turning to Jim I said, “You mean to tell me that our entire version control system is based on trust and some voodoo code of ethics?” Jim beat me down with that shut-up or you’ll be coding COBOL for the rest of your life look. I decided then and there that following this path was much more hazardous to his career than mine so I shutup and listened.
Obscurity was the key to our security. Jim couldn’t figure out a way to make BitTorrent secure (the VPN maybe?) so he just told everyone to keep the address quiet. I’m not entirely certain how the first leak occured, maybe a network sniffer in a hotel lobby, maybe the laptop that was stolen, or maybe some careless chatter on IRC late one night, but regardless of how, it did happen. Three weeks to the date of implementing Jim’s brilliant plan the entirety of our intelectual property was sitting on a publicly accessible warez server in Prague.
Last I heard Jim was coding COBOL for the insuance company across town.
Wow, for a second I thought I was reading the Daily WTF. You should send this over to Alex.
Cool, I hadn’t heard of the Daily WTF yet. I’ll give it a look later today.