I'm doing an (external) bachelor's degree in the field of computing and am in the second of my three years. The final requirement of this degree is a project, complete with development and a dissertation that has to be submitted to the institute and defended at a Viva. I've taken the liberty of researching well into a lot of parts of my potential project, and have given a lot of thought into it.
My long research has prompted my few family/friends in the industry to ridicule me (which I don't mind), and have warned me that creating a "good" project would run the risk of "questionable" practices enacted.
In short, I've been told that the panel might fail my project and transfer all it's content to a favoured student of their own if they find mine interesting enough. I do not know if this is a fact or just a rumor. But, I don't want this to happen (with me or anyone else).
What measures can I take to make sure that they can't do things like this to both the dissertation I submit and the code I develop? I've already thought of private repositories on online version control systems to keep the code, but what about the dissertation?
Note:
- we are required to include a declaration signed by my advisor and myself that allows the dissertation to be used by the institute for loans and publishing, as well as to outside organizations.
- I'm intending to release the software as open-source after I graduate, so this may be a problem.
- If it is stolen, I doubt that complaining to the institute will help, and may result on the ganging up on me.
P.S.: I hope I don't sound like a whiner or moron.