So why bother securing anything at all if not willing to secure the raisons d'être? Doesn’t that suggest that these companies are trivial entities?
We're making an industrial sorting machine. Our management is feared to death to lose the source code. But realistically, who's going to put in the time to fully understand a codebase we can barely grasp ourselves? Then get rid of all custom sensor mappings, paths and other stuff specific for us. And then develop on it further, assuming they even believe we have the "right" way of doing things?
Right, no one. 90% of companies could open source their stuff and, apart from legal nonsense, nothing practical will happen, no one will read the code.
Companies in other legal jurisdictions will and can steal ip with little impunity and throw new AI tools to quickly gather an understanding of the codebase. Furthermore, knowledge of source provides a roadmap to attack vectors for security violations. Seems foolish to dismiss the risks of losing control of source code.