Wait, who owns GitHub again?

True, at the moment, they can't stop the AIs or who is already in possession of the code. But, they can go after anybody hosting that code (as they have done similarly before).

And the AI companies themselves are also a target, to disallow asking or performing the reverse engineering of designated IP.

The Empire (can) Strike(s) Back (unfortunately).

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anthk 5 hours ago | parent [-]

There's always Gitlab, self-hosting, a tons of other alternatives (Fossil with the builtin server).

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baranul 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Any company that's of the US or from other friendly countries, will not stop courts from going after those hosting certain IP (if it goes down like that) they say should be taken down.

Yes, the counter would be to decentralize, but that doesn't stop going after the AI companies too. At the very least, a type of chilling effect can be created, where people and especially companies (with more to lose) would not want to risk using.

From the looks of it, the court cases are coming. Have no idea how things will turn out, other than this looks far from over.

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anthk an hour ago | parent [-]

Wine tells me otherwise from reimplementations.

Also, https://osgameclones.com

Otter Browser it's pretty much inspired from Opera 12 too.

And, for a much better example, XMMS vs WinAMP 2/3, virtually the exact same interface, with skins support.

GNU/Linux itself clones the Unix interface, API and ABI. And so did the BSD's.

Another example, Lesstif when Motif was propietary. Same API, and you could run lots of stuff written for Motif under LessTif. Now libre Motif superseded it around a decade ago.

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baranul 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

What the music and movie industry did and does, in regards to IP, is the counter-example.

	▲	anthk 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		This is software, not media. Different laws apply. Unix and GNU mirrored 1:1 (and extended) a commercial, propietary OS (different Unix flavours). With FVWM + LessTif + gcc you basically had a reimplemented Unix workstation at home. Bash, GCC, *utils, X.org, LessTif, ZIP vs PKZIP... Also, every libre Smalltalk IDE out there had the virtual UI as the propietary ones. Also, FreeDOS in the 90's and DOSEmu. Same virtual interface and usage.