I'm fairly indifferent really.

I'm not going to use an ISV if I have time and expertise, nor would I do the support.

If it performs bad its their problem, and being a hero to the business and fixing their code just means the business has less reason to kick them out the door while putting yourself on the line if something goes wrong.

From a competitor, if I know they do something better, then I know there is room for improvement and I can look at my own processes\design\code. If they were in the market first, then I probably have to do better to take business from them, not just as good.

To me, condoning the practice of stealing code would be a sympton of bigger issues in terms of risk taking and shortcutting.

But that said I would not be against of anyone in the practice of encrypting stored procedures to reduce business risk of code theft.