[mendocino]

So it is OK for your employees (that you share your code and data with) to distribute it among third parties as they please?

[icebraining]

Employees are bound by contract. You don't need IP laws to prohibit them from sharing the code.

[davidw]

What if your code gets "snuck out", and you don't know who did it. Should it still be free to copy and distribute at that point?

[icebraining]

Yes. The question is: if the code gets snuck out, do you really think IP laws will actually prevent people from distributing it?

Yeah, it's certainly working fine:

https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7087027/Symantec_Norton_Anti...

https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4149808/Windows_NT4_source_c...

https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/3497574/Windows_2000_source_...

[davidw]

"That which is not seen" is a great deal of other software that otherwise might be out there were there not laws against that sort of thing.

[icebraining]

I'd like to see some evidence of that, please.

[davidw]

Well, the links you pointed to are for fairly old versions of Windows, and they are on a pirate site, rather than any old site that chooses to host them in the US. Is Mac OS there in its entirety? How about Oracle? DB2 from IBM?