AI Can Clone Open-Source Software In Minutes
- Reference: 0181201240
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/01/164232/ai-can-clone-open-source-software-in-minutes
- Source link:
> Two software researchers recently [2]demonstrated how modern AI tools can reproduce entire open-source projects, [3]creating proprietary versions that appear both functional and legally distinct . The partly-satirical demonstration shows how quickly artificial intelligence can blur long-standing boundaries between coding innovation, copyright law, and the open-source principles that underpin much of the modern internet.
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> In their presentation, Dylan Ayrey, founder of Truffle Security, and Mike Nolan, a software architect with the UN Development Program, introduced a tool they call malus.sh. For a small fee, the service can "recreate any open-source project," generating what its website describes as "legally distinct code with corporate-friendly licensing. No attribution. No copyleft. No problems." It's a test case in how intellectual property law -- still rooted in 19th-century precedent -- collides with 21st-century automation. Since the US Supreme Court's Baker v. Selden ruling, copyright has been understood to guard expression, not ideas.
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> That boundary gave rise to clean-room design, a method by which engineers reverse-engineer systems without accessing the original source code. Phoenix Technologies famously [4]used the technique to build its version of the PC BIOS during the 1980s. Ayrey and Nolan's experiment shows how AI can perform a clean-room process in minutes rather than months. But faster doesn't necessarily mean fair. Traditional clean-room efforts required human teams to document and replicate functionality -- a process that demanded both legal oversight and significant labor. By contrast, an AI-mediated "clean room" can be invoked through a few prompts, raising questions about whether such replication still counts as fair use or independent creation.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~ZipNada
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qEtm2zx314
[3] https://www.techspot.com/news/111904-ai-can-clone-open-source-software-minutes-problem.html
[4] https://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=3846
Re: (Score:2)
We're talking about what's technologically possible. AI can easily ignore the license and do whatever it likes
Re: (Score:2)
Does this mean if an AI ingests any GPL related code - at all, and we can somehow prove it, that all code generated by it MUST be licensed GPL? Afaik, any use of (non-L)GPL code in your project requires you to open the code you add to it as GPL as well. The logical conclusion would be that any AI ingesting a piece of GPL code and generating (vibing or otherwise) code (without providing proper references so you can prove no contamination), means that code MUST be GPL'd when products of that code are publicly
Re: (Score:2)
> Afaik, any use of (non-L)GPL code in your project requires you to open the code you add to it as GPL as well
This is only true if the resulting project is distributed. Software-as-a-Service that contains GPL'd code is not required to be GPL'd.
Re: (Score:2)
That theory will sure get tested with the [1]next day Claude Code [github.com] clone that used OpenAI's Codex to port the leaked Anthropic code to Python.
[1] https://github.com/instructkr/claw-code
Clean room? (Score:5, Informative)
Even if you use an AI to extract an extremely condensed specification out of the source code, it's hardly clean room if the LLM was pre-trained on the source code any way.
Re: (Score:2)
If it really was clean room, they would be able to do replicas of closed source projects just as easily. Or, indeed, just about anything.
Software Cloning (Score:2)
Can it clone proprietary software and turn it into an open source project?
If so, then I think the tradeoff is fair.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe have it create and publish the source code of 64-bit Windows 7, w/ no allowances for any assembly language? Then port it to all non-x86 CPUs - RISC-V, Arm, and even legacy NT hardware like Alpha and MIPS
Not tested in court... (Score:3)
"legally distinct code with corporate-friendly licensing. No attribution. No copyleft. No problems."
They can claim that it is legally distinct, but until they win the lawsuit and appeals to set a legal precedent -it is not safe to make the assumption.
Not limited to open source. (Score:3)
Despite the open source spin, source code is not required to do this as source code can also be generated from binaries. It shouldn't be shocking by now to learn that you can fully automate breaking down executable into functional source code with the addition of AI to "make sense" of the generated code. As such, this means that even large sophisticated and complex programs are also targets.
The real question is, who wants to deal with a massive amount of AI slop code?
Please start w/ ReactOS (Score:3)
That way, make that OS at least a stable, working one, instead of the alpha stage that it's been in for 30 years
Re: (Score:3)
How do you expect ReactOS to be stable and working when the purpose is to achieve feature-parity with Windows?
April fools (Score:1)
This story was the 1st to show up on my feed today and then I remember I can't trust any story on Slashdot on April 1st.
I could not be bothered to scroll the rest of the feed. See y'all tomorrow.
Re: (Score:2)
I feel like there hasn't been a good Slashdot April 1st joke in years.
I Always Could Do That. (Score:2)
git clone [1]https://github.com/YourStuff/A... [github.com]
But, when I put my name on it everybody gets all pissy.
[1] https://github.com/YourStuff/AllYourBase
Can AI clone lawyers & judges? (Score:3)
because it seems there's going to be a lot more IP infringement and it won't be limited to open source
Re: Can AI clone lawyers & judges? (Score:2)
ChatGpt says that qualifies as sound legal advice, so we're good. Ship it!