I have impression that the subject is about source hiding and
preserving it from the others eyes. Hold it as a kind of advantage
over competition.

I spend last 14 years developing various solutions almost exclusively
in financial domain, stock exchanges, inter-bank trading and financial
institutions integrations, market data visualizations, data feed for
various data vendors, order entry and order rooting, building trading
systems and market data analysis.
I start as a developer and now I am a head of development. Clients of
mine are mostly banks, national banks, ministry of finance, ministry
of treasure and other government institutions, stock exchanges and
brokerage houses and such.

I think that I have a good sense about issue addressed here. My
clients are as paranoid about security as military or even more.

Nevertheless, the most precious thing you can posses are idea,
creativity, customer trust and people. Source code is not in this area
and it's changing all the times.

Creative developer that produces a solution is priceless in
correlation with code that he/she produce. If you loose the developer
you lose in a sense the code too.
I can elaborate on the subject but it's pointless.
And for the end just one thought: There was a time where people think
that earth was a round plate carried by the giant turtles - some still
do.