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.
Hot take: You should be able to create derivative works of open source stuff and earn a living with that. Or be allowed to profit of the open source product.
You generally can, just comply with the license. This is a tool for not complying with the license.
I know. But there are parasitic licenses that try to force your commercial software to become open source even if used as a minor component. That’s stupid. And potentially dangerous to both the public, the asset producer, and the open source community.
If you’re referring to GPL variants, that depends. You can absolutely use GPL software and libraries with closed source software. You just need to separate the GPL portions from the closed source portions with some sort of boundary, like running it as a service of some sort or turning it into a CLI tool. You’re just not allowed to create derivative works of GPL software that isn’t also GPL.
Also, there should be nothing dangerous about open sourcing code (unless you’re referring to financial risk to the business I guess). Secrets should never live in code, and obscurity is never secure.