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My personal opinion is that virtually all user support information should
be googlable. If a customer googles my product's name, I'd much rather they
see content coming from my company than content written by some user
somewhere else. Your competitors already have your product, or access to
it. It's very difficult to reverse an application based on documentation.
On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 9:32 AM, Suzette Leeming <suzette -dot- leeming -at- gmail -dot- com>
wrote:
> I'm looking for opinions and/or examples. Here's my situation:
>
> I create browser based help for a suite of financial applications,
> generally used by banks, credit unions, etc. A suggestion has been made
> that we put all of our documentation online, wide open for everyone who
> wants to access. I disagree, since I feel it contains proprietary
> information and represents intellectual property. Our competitors could
> very well look at it and say "we can do that better", or use information
> they see there against us when competing for the same business.
>
> We're not the same as Microsoft Office or even Sage Accounting (which were
> examples given to me) because we are not dealing with retail, off the shelf
> applications; ours is enterprise software in a highly competitive industry.
>
> My proposal is to restrict access somehow, perhaps requiring user accounts,
> or verified IP addresses, etc. I note that none of our competitors make
> their documentation freely accessible.
>
> Have any of you come up against a similar situation or have any
> thoughts/ideas on how I can best present my case?
>
> Suzette Leeming
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