205
This AI Tool Rips Off Open Source Software Without Violating Copyright (www.404media.co)
submitted 1 week ago by artifex@piefed.social to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] grue@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)
  • The GPL requires that derivative works must also be licensed under the GPL.
  • LLMs are trained on GPL code.
  • LLM output is a derivative work of the training data (especially if it's asked to replicate one of the works it's trained on!).
  • Therefore, all LLM output is either also GPL, or if it's also been trained on stuff with conflicting licensing, just straight-up copyright infringement to use at all no matter what.

Laundering copyright is what LLMs do. It is fundamental to how they function, which means that they are a fundamentally illegal technology.

this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
205 points (99.0% liked)

Open Source

46541 readers
104 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Cloak@lemmy.ml
kevincox@lemmy.ml
CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml