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Do you have a right to privacy of your source code?

cstanton

As an individual, if you write a program and share the binary of that, should the expectancy be that you share its source code?

You might not want to share the source code, for example, you can very easily be judged based on that source code, both professionally and personally.

I've known people purposefully not post their code on Git Hub because they know employers will scrutinize and judge it, and in fact others observe how many 'regular commits' you do. Whether or not such judgment is fair is out of scope, but it's certainly something that's in the public eye at that point.

So perhaps you release a compiled binary because you want to help, but you don't want to invite conversations about the code, make it publicly displayed, or maybe there are other reasons.

However, someone comes along, decompiles the binary, reverse engineers it with ida pro, and releases the source code - citing that they have every right to do that, and now everyone can see the code, even though it's against your wishes.

Who was in the wrong? Or was no one in the wrong? Does it go to copyright since there was no license? Or was there an implied license?

There certainly appears to be a strong sense of justice among those online, that insists "it's just code" and "there's a right to transparency".

But there feels like there's something here that may not stand up to this scrutiny and this cavalier attitude of someone's work. Comparatively in the art world, someone creates a piece of art, and recently those components are being re-used in the case of AI (stable diffusion) and there's an uproar, but aren't they just laying the components bare? Maybe the analogy doesn't quite fit, but it certainly feels like for some reason code, by some, is treat differently to other mediums. Even though there are patents, copyrights, licenses, etc.

It could be difficult or even impossible for an individual to do something about this without financial backing, too. Especially compared to companies.

What do you think?

Edit: If you're picking up on spelling errors rather than the topic and context of the post, you're easily distracted. ;)

  • in reply to DAB
    DAB said:
    I assume that any code I put on line, like at element14, essentially becomes public domain.

    You would need to take steps to specifically assign it to the public domain, otherwise the copyright remains.

  • This issue has always been a bane of the software industry.

    Copyrights are only good if you spend the effort to find someone illegally using your code and you are willing to spend the legal dollars to enforce your right.

    I assume that any code I put on line, like at element14, essentially becomes public domain.

    As soon as others figure out how your code works, they will duplicate it in many ways which make your rights very hard to enforce.

  • in reply to cstanton
    cstanton said:
    soundcard company for indirectly planned obsolescence by not releasing updated drivers for their soundcards

    That sounds like my soundcard ... with its frequent BSODs under the most recent W10 update. No driver updates for a decade or so ... and it was a high-end product when I bought it.

    Too bad I don't have the time nor skills to sort that out ...

    - Gough

  • in reply to cstanton
    cstanton said:
    Which is somewhat protected in various ways, and reverse engineering something, or decompiling it and then simply sharing that source code without permission or rights to do so.

    But the process of reverse engineering itself could be argued to be transformative as machine code is being converted into sources (and this is not always a 1:1 process). Furthermore, if the output is annotated - variables named rather than automated output, it does add value ...

    And even if it wasn't and if the issue was copyright, some countries also have exceptions for research, documentation and critique under a fair dealing or fair use clause. A case could be made that this is a "study" of the program and its modes of operation.

    I feel like if your intention is to hide the code, you really shouldn't be letting the code out of the door in any form - this is where a lot of companies have gone to the SaaS route and instead provide API access to their algorithms. This way, the only thing that could be done is a "black box" style test, and even that may be forbidden/rate-limited etc. If you can execute it, the code obviously will exist for analysis - the same can be said for any webpage (and the issue around rewriting the code of a page for ad-blocking, adding features, etc). Obfuscation and technical countermeasures mostly frustrate, but sometimes they are used for legal protection measures - e.g. YouTube invoking DMCA over youtube-dl over the breaking of their (mostly trivial) rolling cipher.

    There are nuances - but there's also a lot of money for lawyers to make ... I kinda feel like the two may not be entirely unrelated.

    - Gough

  • in reply to cstanton
    cstanton said:
    Aspects of copyright have to be assessed in context

    Can perhaps get messy, as you can have the same copyrighted data being interpreted both as music (through audio medium) and animated graphics (through video medium) simultaneously Slight smile

    Jerobeam Fenderson: Oscilloscope Music Kickstarter (June 2015)

  • in reply to cstanton

    If the symbol table was removed at compile time then I would expect you to lose your variable and function names, so you would end up with substitute names in the decompiled source.

  • cstanton said:
    I've known people purposefully not post their code on Git Hub because they know employers will scrutinize and judge it,

    This is one of the reasons why I do post my code on github. 

  • in reply to bradfordmiller
    bradfordmiller said:
    So there is no copyright for binary code.

    The resulting compiled form of software source code can be considered a copyrightable work. Aspects of copyright have to be assessed in context.

    If we're purely talking about 'arrangements' of zeroes and ones. That gets fun. Let's compare it to music:

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    Some dump repositories to fight bit rot do exist if one searches hard enough.