It’s been in my mind if we are using the software/program or even hardware of a tech company, we can play around, install-unsinstall and more. Then how is it so difficult for someone to “unhide” the source code that the device uses? Technically the code is in the device somewhere hidden in it, so it’s there, but still, it’s almost impossible to obtain the source code. How do they achieve this so no one copies their code?
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You are mixing up some terms there. It’s source code vs object code and open source vs close source. Object code is created in various ways such by compilers, interpreters and everything in between, runtime libraries, just in time compilers etc. etc. You can get a licence to use the source code or the object code or both. the object code being what you install/run/use. For proprietary software, the source is not usually licensed apart from certain formal business use cases. The licence terms dictate what you can and cannot do legally. If you have a licence to the source you also get instructions on how to build your object and what tools and dependencies etc. are required to do so. So that is the first hurdle, legality. The 2nd is complexity. One high level statement in your source code can translate to many thousands of low level instructions and calls to a cascade of libraries which can be 3rd party and all the way through to the OS and the BIOS then on to the microcode and instructions of the CPU/GPU of the computer it’s running on. If you have the knowledge of machine/assembly language and in-depth knowledge of all the various layers you can follow, make modifications both benign and nefarious, or indeed if you have the time, patience and budget for it, recreate a source of sorts. Depending on the extent companies want to protect their IP or for security there are various schemes of devious complexities that will thwart your efforts. One example being polymorphic code in viruses which can hide and rewrite their code in real time, but that’s for another day.
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