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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 the past, decompiling source code left a fairly obfuscated result, so it probably wasn’t a big deal. Now with AI I guess they can make it much nicer, and probably even improve on it!

    The sad reality of it is that it makes it even more likely that someone will take your hard work and release a copy of your software under a different name.

    I agree that only the big tech companies will be able to battle that in court, so they are also more likely to steal ideas from the little guys.

    Art is a tough one too, as you can argue that all art these days is in some ways derived from earlier artists. Every artist has been exposed to other people’s art. As long as the AI is influenced by enough other sources, you’d think it would be a new original.

    I suppose it’s similar to what my contractor said about our house plans years ago - we paid extra to have the architect update their plan to include our changes, but the contractor said that probably wasn’t necessary, as we had changed it enough to now be our own design, and the original plans used existing styles, layouts, and features that was quite common in general. Ie, the architect had based his plans on other designers’ work too. We felt it was the right thing to do though.

  • cstanton said:
    reverse engineers it with eda pro

    Did you mean 'IDA Pro' there ?

  • However, someone comes along, decompiles the binary, reverse engineers it with eda 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.

    Granted, if the license accompanying the binary says reverse engineering is not permitted, then the issue becomes a very legal discussion.

    Outside of that specific case, I think it comes down to intent.

    If someone reverse-compiled my code, I do not think I would care so much. Tools are pretty decent at figuring out what was going on, but they aren't perfect. So I don't think I would care if I am uncomfortable sharing the code for non-legal reasons.

    An analogy would be employers using social media feeds to determine whether they want to hire candidates. The information is public, but the context may not apply to a specific job. However, they could use that to determine if they hire a person.

    Just like reverse engineering, the code may give a source code... and it might be in the right of the employer to use it as a judgment tool. But just because it is legal does not mean it is correct.

    Frankly, if a potential company did that to me and decided not to hire me, I would consider it a blessing, not a curse.

  • If one has published code as shareware its fair game. If you request a NDA before sharing, thats a different beast. Sometimes you can't be nice if you need to protect yourself. If someone needs help do it with private messaging. 

  • in reply to robogary

    Can you clarify what you mean by "code."?

    Source code or binary code?

  • My understanding....

    Source code is automatically copyrighted and you have control over how the work is used. If you don't register it with a copyright office, it gets harder to prove ownership, but doesn't change your rights to the work.

    I'm not a fan of it, but that is how it is.

    If some source code is reconstructed from some binary and altered enough, it would be hard to prove it was copied, but if proven to be a copy, it would not be legal.

  • in reply to dougw

    Also, default copyright rights (is that like ATM machine?) vary by jurisdiction.

  • in reply to robogary

    I think that's fundamental to the discussion though, isn't it?

    You don't need an NDA to prevent someone from reverse disassembling a binary. If the license accompanying the binary says you cannot de-compile it, then that's pretty clear cut.