I code industrial machines for a living. All the machines that are purchased (whether it’s used, new, refurb, etc..) has code that is encrypted. (Non openable/readable) but the machine will always understand it.
The main reason as to why these companies encrypt the code is supposedly because of the time and research that they dedicated to get the perfect formula.
I was hired on by a medium sized company to code their refurbished machine. Would it ruin my reputation if I encrypted the code before walking away?