> I'm far from suggesting that companies should publish their code for everyone to see
This would actually be a good punishment. If you screw up, you could be forced to open source your code. If VW is serious, they could do such a thing. I guess that Mercedes wants to keep its Formula 1 code closed, but for it's normal cars it is a different case. The big car companies share so many of their technologies and even complete cars, what's keeping them?
1.) Pay a disgruntled competitor's employee to deliberately sabotage part of their product in an illegal way.
2.) Finger the company to the feds.
3.) Watch as the competitor's market position is hurt by bad thing X.
Works if X is fines, sanctions, stricter regulations, prison time for those involved, or even just a court case that costs a significant amount of money.
Thus we shouldn't punish a corporation no matter how bad it is.
As a side note, this same logic would let us conclude that punishing a person who commits a crime is a bad plan because it allows for their enemy/rival to frame them.
I agree your arguments are reductio ad absurdum. The difference between the government compelling groups to forced speech (release all of your source-code, trade secrets) and fines is that forced speech destroys value. From a societal standpoint, the punishment should scale to the crime. Being forced to open source a companies code is arbitrary and indiscriminate. Why should a company who spent $20 million on their code, who committed a transgression that would be equivalent to a fine of $100k have to open source their entire code base?
My guess is the motivation to force a company to disclose their source code as punishment is coming from a place of thinking that the more harsh the punishment, the more seriously actors will abide by the rules. As it's been proven to be the case in criminal law, the death penalty does nothing to dissuade homicide.
If a disgruntled employee can successfully sabotage part of their code base, their process is broken anyway, and uncovering this would actually be a good thing.
If you're looking to sabotage a competitor where you have a saboteur, why not just do (1), except at various other parts of their development/manufacturing process?
Pay them to break their factory automation. Pay them to write code that randomly increases fuel consumption. Pay them to write code that only allows you to play Rick Astley songs during March.
Because government is your force multiplier. If you have an embedded saboteur doing direct sabotage, you can only do as much damage as one person can do. If you have your saboteur conducting false flag crimes against the government, you can do as much damage as one government can do, at a time that you may be able to influence via quiet information leaks to the right people.
How would that sink a competitor? In the days before software ran cars, Ford could buy a Chevy, take it apart, and learn everything about it. This did not sink Chevy or prevent competition or a healthy auto industry in any way.
How is it different if Ford gets to see Chevy's throttle control software code today?
This would actually be a good punishment. If you screw up, you could be forced to open source your code. If VW is serious, they could do such a thing. I guess that Mercedes wants to keep its Formula 1 code closed, but for it's normal cars it is a different case. The big car companies share so many of their technologies and even complete cars, what's keeping them?