[MengerSponge]

> what's stopping some employee from something like Mathematica from taking the source code and having an agent port it to open source

Laws against theft. Also the same reason employees don't release the code on pastebin or something.

> Who owns an algorithm?

The org or person who was granted the software patent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent

> Will everything get copied eventually?

If we're lucky. More likely everything bitrots as technical capabilities are lost. Slowly at first, then quickly.

[downboots]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number

[MengerSponge]

honestly one of my favorite Wikipedia articles. It's silly, but it is a logical conclusion to the existence of secret information.

45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B1

REDACTED

45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B3

[Y_Y]

Which patent are you referring to?

[shwaj]

Any patent. The question was who owns a (arbitrary) algorithm. The elaborated answer is that nobody “owns” an algorithm (i.e. has intellectual property rights to it) without a patent: in USA and many other jurisdictions, patents are the IP tool relating to algorithms.