Hiding source code: so bad!

For my own research and development I have almost totally committed to Ruby (yes, I decided to ignore that little "poor run time performance" problem). For many years, one of the attractions of C++, Java (with byte code obfustication), compiled Common Lisp, etc. was that intellectual property could be protected.

If you write and distribute code in a scripting language like Ruby, clearly everyone gets the source code.

I am over this desire to hide source code. First, I think that in most cases (for me) using open source licenses makes the best business sense. Second, in cases where proprietary software does make sense, it seems to me that customers who buy products get shortchanged if they do not also receive source code for what they pay for.