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 software without crediting the original developers.

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.

  • SenalEnglish
    2·
    4 hours ago

    TL;DR;

    Sounds like a bunch of organisational issues using licensing as a scapegoat.

    Again, not giving an opinion on FOSS licencing pro’s and cons, just on the implementation of licensing in general.

    My issue with viral licensing is that it means you got to rewrite the code or use another product.

    Or…comply with the licence.

    but yes, that’s entirely the intention of a licence.

    You can use this thing as long as you adhere to the rules set forth, if you don’t want to then feel free to create your own or find something with a licence more to your liking.

    They aren’t forcing this on you, using these products is optional.

    Also software bom is a hassle.

    Absolutely.

    However, that feels more like a procurement/evaluation issue.

    e.g : “is bringing in this open source, viral GPL audio processing library worth the trade-off of dealing with the compliance vs paying money for a similar commercial product (or building our own)”

    Some advanced manufacturing techniques rely on advanced software. So does infrastructure which is often only secured by obscurity. Also all software is filled with vulnerabilities which can get easier to exploit if you have access to the source code.

    That sounds again like a person or persons have royally fucked up their evaluation/procurement duties when selecting the components to use in the building of the product a, quality/security/systems design issue rather than a licensing one.

    if complying with an open source license causes a product to become a danger to the public, many people, at many stages, have utterly failed to do their job.

    Also,i’m sure you know this, but security through obscurity is a poor systems design choice in almost all scenarios.

    As you say though, it does happen in the real world.

    In those cases someone needs to wear the grown up hat and evaluate the options available, such as removing or replacing the component that requires opening up your source code, or evaluating the trade off of how severe a risk opening up the source code is vs the costs involved in replacing it, or even the potential legal liability of just ignoring the licence.

    If you can’t afford any options then your product isn’t viable ( in an “everybody follows the rules” kind of scenario, at least).