[cortesoft]

If no code was copyrightable nor licensable, people could reverse engineer any code they get access to. It would be hard to keep code completely proprietary. You would not be able to distribute your code at all.

I am not saying this is the way we want to go, I am just curious about the thought experiment.

[okamiueru]

Ok, if it's for a thought experiment then I'll play along. Reverse engineering source code is not as easy as you make it out to be. Not only that, but reverse engineering in the sense of black box is not a violation of most existing licenses. And, if we're talking about decompiling code into something useful, that too is a tall order.