There is nothing inherently special about code, than say, a confidential marketing deck or sales plan. If they can go a network drive, or a service like One Drive , why can't we put our code there? I'm not talking about the Xbox firmware or the entire Windows source. This is about little one-off projects, highly specialized tooling, or experimental proof-of-concepts that are blocked by bureaucracy.

It's a misguided policy that hurts morale and leaves a tremendous amount of productivity and value on the floor. And I suspect that many of the policies are in place simply because a number of the rule makers aren't aware of how easy it to share the code. Look how many in this thread alone weren't aware of inherent distributability of git repositories, and presumably they're developers. You really think some aging career dev ops that worked at Microsoft for 30 years is going to make sensical policies about some software that was shunned and forbidden only a decade ago?