I do not understand why we see software different than other things, for example a book. Of course the idea of encrypting or obfuscating a book is nonsense, as the book will lose its purpose, but the book, as well as software has (have?) copy-rights protection, so in order for your competitor to take advantage of your research they will not only need to invest a lot of effort understanding the code, but they will need to write it in a way that is completely different than yours, lets say they change all the code but they did not change the database design, I am sure you can nail them for copyright infringements for that, and if you cannot for there is a flaw in the copyright laws, then this flaw should be addressed. If they change the database design it will be very unlikely that they can re-use your code. So in this sense, protecting source code access is redundant, as it is already protected by copyright laws, the same way every other creation is protected, for example car design.