I set up a crowdfunding campaign for an open source hardware project [1] about 5 years ago, and one of the most common question I heard from concerned family members was "how are you going to protect your idea from being stolen?".

I would calmly explain to them that the biggest risk was the product either never launching our fading into obscurity, and that if the idea was truly valuable it would be copied regardless of what I do, and that I'd actually researched dozens of last campaigns and found that the projects that put less effort towards "protecting" their IP had better long-term prospects. OSHW projects received significantly more funding and lasted significantly longer post-campaign.

Despite this, every single person I spoke to would still insist that I was making a mistake. I genuinely believe that there is some sort of caveman anti-cuckoldry reflex at play here. The visceral image of a counterfeiter getting rich from your hard work motivates people to act against that outcome even if it's not in their best interest.

For what it's worth, the project is still popular 5 years later, nobody has cloned it commercially and it generates enough passive income for me to live off of I so desired.

[1] It's an all-in-one USB oscilloscope, signal generator, power supply etc. board, https://espotek.com/labrador