Ok, I have to admit I learned about these cases in this thread and it threw me for a second.
After reading them carefully I think my earlier statement is correct - there is no law which considers source code as free speech, and several legal frameworks which actively oppose the idea (ITAR, IP and copyright, etc). The idea seems pretty silly to me.
> several legal frameworks which actively oppose the idea (ITAR, IP and copyright, etc). The idea seems pretty silly to me.
IP and copyright do apply to (otherwise free) speech. That's the whole point of them. The Supreme Court famously called copyright 'an engine of free expression'.
Code is fundamentally ideas, explanations, instructions on how to calculate something, written down in rigid, formalized language. I don't see how it couldn't be a form of "speech", just like books, poems and music are.
Speech is regulated of course, e.g. bomb-building instructions are illegal to publish in the US.
Maybe you could make a case this crypto shuffling method is similar and spreading the know-how on how to do it should be forbidden, but that doesn't make it not speech.
Let's step back for a second because we are losing focus. The original Twitter thread had people claiming that Tornado could not be removed from GitHub because it is protected constitutionally. My original comment was pointing out that this is not even remotely true. I think we can agree on that?
Second, and this is just my opinion, but if I had to make two sets with the nouns 'book', 'poem', 'manual', 'hammer', 'jacket', and 'program', the partitions would be thus: book and poem would be together, with manual, hammer, jacket, and program in the other category. I'm having trouble describing it but in my mind the purpose of the first category is to communicate an idea (speech) whereas the purpose of the second is to enact a reality (tools). A program doesn't express something specifically human any more than a toroid, or the wave equation, or a chemical bond, but a poem about love certainly does.
