Currently, Yolol locking has a few main problems:
1. A malicious ship designer could have less-than-helpful code that can be detrimental to an uninformed user (e.g. turning on the transponder outside of a safezone, though this can be mitigated by a transponder status output and just cutting the cable), though this would be noticed almost immediately.
2. Is there anything stopping someone from purchasing blueprint, and then spying on the code via the yolol edit menu? Although if the upcoming blueprint protection system can be expanded upon this, it would be feasible to be able to "lock" certain things unless the original designer is present. For example, instead of displaying the code in the ship designer it could say "This yolol chip is locked by <username of original designer>", and in the live universe instead of being able to unlock the chip it could display a red lock that says "Code protection enabled - please contact the designer of this ship for further information". Unfortunately, this means people can distribute whole copies of the ship or just simply move the chips to their own ship - but they will never be able to copy your code, I guess?
Also, props to you for making poker - very cool!
For 1. Sure there would be that risk. But I imagine the market would not like locked yolol in their ship. A ship with x value would be devalued by buyers if there was locked yolol. And I doubt the devs would put locked yolol in the shops.. and buying from players already has this risk but worse.. because there could be a second transponder hidden in the ship that is secretly controlled...
Locked yolol does not increase the ability to sabotage, there are already better ways to sabotage
Buying ships from other users which are not from ship shop is already as risky as it can be
For 2. Yes. Of course the code would need to be invisible and uncopiable. If it is traded, stolen, or moved I see no problem.. As long there is no way to duplicate it. (Eg removing the chip then using repair tool)
Main issue could be repair.. but the market would solve that
You might want 2 settings..
Locked but can duplicated via repair tool
Locked no duplication
Just so one could choose to protect source code copying but allow full ship repair
Locked yolol(especially unrepairable if colpletly lost/destroyed) will be disliked by the ship buying market, so unless the locked chip is so unique and usefull that it adds enough value as to compensate for this it would not be smart to lock it because you would loose sell price value (probably significant money if the chip could not be repaired)
...do you have a company yet? 