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.
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.
Im not expressing an opinion on the viral nature of the licence itself, nor the pros and cons of FOSS, nor am I a FOSS evangelist of any kind.
But you understand it’s optional right? if you don’t like it, don’t use it.
This isn’t some gotcha, you can literally decide not to use the thing under the licence you don’t like. That will solve 100% of the problems you are describing (though it sounds like it’d introduce new, non-licence based problems in whatever example you are thinking of)
Well… I say that, but im actually not sure what you mean by “dangerous to the public”, if you could go in to a bit more detail about what you mean there, I’d appreciate it
My issue with viral licensing is that it means you got to rewrite the code or use another product. Also software bom is a hassle.
Some advanced manufacturing techniques rely on advanced software. So does infrastructure which is often only secured by obscurity. Also all software is filled with vulnerabilities which can get easier to exploit if you have access to the source code.
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.
Pretty sure that e.g. manufacturing techniques for physics based design are highly problematic. So is the software for military communications. The real world is in fact real.
Your first example isn’t even code, and in your second if the “software” was remotely well architectured its configuration (not code) is what would need to be kept secret. You’re also very rude!