[cliff_badger]

I think you're incorrect, although I hope you're not.

This idea will never become a reality for the vast majority of companies, for the exact same reason that companies fear piracy. If I open source my product then anyone who uses that open source code is a lost sale. A lost sale means I make less money, less money means the board is mad, on and on and on...

The bottom line is money, and open sourcing their code means (to them) a loss in potential revenue.

[doctor_eval]

Well, that’s only true if you plan to sell the code. Much code exists not for its own sake, but to support the business. Maybe you need to build an in house inventory system for some kind of complex product you’re building. You were never gonna sell that software, but you still won’t open source it because that would help your competitors...

[ghaff]

Well, and if it's so tied into an in-house inventory system just tossing a bunch of code into a Github repo is about 99% useless. There is almost zero value to just tossing some open source code over the wall.

[freeone3000]

A counterpoint is that companies making money through sale of software code alone is the lowest ever. Google loses nothing from open source, as they sell nothing. The biggest companies have moved to SaaS stacks or enterprise sales models. We're seeing less value in the code itself, so the release of it is getting easier every day.