This AI Tool Rips Off Open Source Software Without Violating Copyright (www.404media.co)

submitted 1 month ago by artifex@piefed.social to c/foss@beehaw.org

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Malus, which is a piece of "satire" but also fully functional, performs a "clean room" clone of open source software, meaning users could then sell, redistribute, etc. the software without crediting the original developers. But I have a hard time with the "clean room" argument since the LLM doing the behind-the-scenes work has already ingested the entire corpus of open source software -- and somehow the output of the LLMs isn't considered a derivative work.

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[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 2 points 4 weeks ago

What does any of this have to do with GPL or open source licenses? Military applications all have strict validation requirements that rule out the majority of open source anyway, and your first example doesn't even explain how the software being open source would be dangerous at all. Actually, for that matter, nor does the military example. Encryption doesn't work because the other party doesn't know your algorithm lol, it works because the other party doesn't know your secret keys.

this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026

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