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. ;)
