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mfabbri77 3 hours ago

This has the potential to kill open source, or at least the most restrictive licenses (GPL, AGPL, ...): if a license no longer protects software from unwanted use, the only possible strategy is to make the development closed source.

abrookewood 18 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It's not just open source, it is literally anything source-available, whether intentional or not.

_dwt 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, this is the reason I've completely stopped releasing any open-source projects. I'm discovering that newer models are somewhat capable of reverse-engineering even compiled WebAssembly, etc. too, so I can feel a sort of "dark forest theory" taking hold. Why publish anything - open or closed - to be ripped off at negligible marginal cost?

abrookewood 18 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Why does it matter if it is 'ripped off' if you released it as open source anyway? I get that you might want to impose a particular licence, but is that the only reason?

Tiberium 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People are just not realizing this now because it's mostly hobby projects and companies doing it in private, but eventually everyone will realize that LLMs allow almost any software to be reverse engineered for cheap.

See e.g. https://banteg.xyz/posts/crimsonland/ , a single human with the help of LLMs reverse engineered a non-trivial game and rewrote it in another language + graphics lib in 2 weeks.

seddonm1 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s a real problem. I threw it at an old MUD game just to see how hard it is [0] then used differential testing and LLMs to rewrite it [1]. Just seems to be time and money.

[0] https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf...

[1] https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf...

user34283 15 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I find the wording "protect from unwanted use" interesting.

It is my understanding that what a GPL license requires is releasing the source code of modifications.

So if we assume that a rewrite using AI retains the GPL license, it only means the rewrite needs to be open source under the GPL too.

It doesn't prevent any unwanted use, or at least that is my understanding. I guess unwanted use in this case could mean not releasing the modifications.