My biggest fear is that if I show these big guys some of the stuff it can do, they just go ahead and write their own, leaving me with nothing for all the work I've done.
A copyright would not cover this sort of thing. I would probably need to patent the process... and that costs a ton.
-----------------Patent rant-----------------------
If they do the work themselves, you can't really complain even if it sucks that they stole your idea. Being inspired is fair play, in fact it's how progress happen. Patents do nothing but hamper innovation. Only the big guys can afford to defend patents. Microsoft gets 10-15 bucks for every Android phone sold, because they have a patent for scrollbars (or something stupid like that). Anyway, meaningless patents that should never have been approved in the first place. Microsoft chose to not tax desktop Linux for scrollbars, because it would just look bad. How can you own an idea? It just shows how mean this world is. Steve Jobs had his end-of-page-bounce-back-animation patent that Samsung "stole". Samsung did copy Apple and they paid for it. What's wrong with copying I say? What's wrong with using the knowledge that already exists?
Then there is pure evil. Companies that want to patent seeds (food), DNA (babies?). Air and water are probably next.
The only legitimate patents that I can think of are related to brand names because it's like identity theft. You can't make computers with the Apple logo, that would be purposefully wanting to deceive people. Software licensing is a different topic. I feel it makes sense as long as reverse-engineering is allowed. Like React OS is reverse-engineering Windows XP/Server 2003.
----------------End patent rant------------------
Anyway, secrets are fair play. Guard your source code if you want to make money. Sometimes people are naive. Like the Apple developer who wanted his application in the Mac store. He had figured out how to sync OSX and iOS through wifi, when Apple only had USB-sync.
He submitted his source code to Apple, but his app was rejected for some reason. Apple did get back to him saying that they were impressed and that he was welcome to apply for a position at Apple. The developer didn't start working for Apple. Instead he found himself in the audience half a year later when Apple introduced the new big feature (wifi sync). Since he didn't work for Apple he couldn't know if it was his code that was being used. I guess he won't submit source code anymore.
