Why does this website feel like the end of FOSS?

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ell1e@leminal.space⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

When I look at this website, which seems to be intended as a serious project and not a joke, to me it kind of feels like it would be the end of FOSS… malus.sh Is it just me?

Or will the majority of contributors still bother if they won’t even get the most basic attribution anymore, let alone GPL and other complex licenses being enforcable at all?

There are also these events that make me wonder if this service can even work, given the apparent training data plagiarism problem. This feels kind of independent from whether a gen AI fed a project can ever be “clean room”:

dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543507.3583199

twobirds.com/…/landmark-ruling-of-the-munich-regi…

arstechnica.com/…/authors-celebrate-historic-sett…

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/01/…/685552/

I feel like there are more reasons than ever to tell people to cut out gen AI code from FOSS entirely, if they care about respecting attribution and the work of others. Even if just morally. This whole ride seems to be going in a bad direction.

I’m curious about other people’s thoughts, however.

PS: Don’t trust me on any law-related guesses, IANAL. This isn’t legal advice. I’m just a concerned coder.

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Comments

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schwim@piefed.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It strikes me as a joke/sarcastic jab at the industry.

Tired of putting “Portions of this software…” in your documentation? Those maintainers worked for free—why should they get credit?

…and suddenly your entire proprietary codebase must be open sourced. The horror!

Through our offshore subsidiary in a jurisdiction that doesn’t recognize software copyright

I’m surprised anyone could take the site seriously.

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- ell1e@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  I assumed it was real because people seem to be doing this for real: theregister.com/…/ai_kills_software_licensing/
  
  And outside of that, all the gen AI coders seem to be ignoring that apparently AI is plagiarizing training data too. And it seems to happen randomly and unpredictably even for who you would think are expert users, Microslop themselves: pcgamer.com/…/microsoft-uses-plagiarized-ai-slop-…
  
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inari@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
The other side of that is that any leaked proprietary code could also be reverse engineered and vibe coded

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- ell1e@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Yeah, I find it scary how many projects embrace gen AI despite all the training data controversies. I’ve tried to convince some not to, but even the Linux kernel appears to be using it now. It’s sad.
  
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SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

Some will argue that what we do is exploitative, that we are extracting the ideas from open source while leaving behind the people who contributed them. To this I say: yes, that is a reasonably accurate description of our business model. It is also a reasonably accurate description of every company that has ever used open source software without contributing back, which is to say, virtually every company that has ever used open source software. We are simply being honest about it, and charging a fee for the privilege.

I don’t think it’s satire.

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- ell1e@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  The terms of use link goes nowhere, so I honestly don’t know.
  
  But I feel like it doesn’t matter whether it is, for the sake of discussing where gen AI seems to be leading FOSS…
  
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SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If it’s not satire, then calling it “malice” is too on-the-nose.

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- ell1e@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Seems like it might be satire after all: malus.sh/blog.html Will update my post in a second. But the trend seems to be real, with others discussing the effects on the GPL too: writings.hongminhee.org/…/legal-vs-legitimate/
  
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mvirts@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Wait, this makes no sense. Just say your AI to write the libraries you need rather than clone an existing project

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- ell1e@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  I suppose, but then the training data plagiarism moral question remains. Rate seems to be like 2-5% for what they can pin down: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543507.3583199 I’m guessing that means the hidden actual rate might be higher… and there are the high profile incidents.
  
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solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I wonder if it can also convert binaries. Put a copy of Oracle through it and watch the shenanigans.

Also wonder whether they can generate movies the same way. Put in a DVD and a completely new movie comes out, with the same plot, characters, etc., but with all the names and dialogue changed and the actors are replaced by deepfakes that look different.

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- JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Was there some generative AI that was making original Seinfeld episodes? What’s the deal with that?
  
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- Zak@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I don’t know if that service can, but LLM-based workflows can do that. Here’s an LLM-based decompiler project which could serve as the first step in such a pipeline.
  
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- ell1e@leminal.space ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yeah, or the leaked Windows XP source code. Every day any gen AI code use feels more to me like license laundering, if anything then of the t raining data. And I mean this purely as a gut feeling, I have no idea what a court would say but it feels wrong.
  
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mvirts@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Now the next gpl needs to protect code written based on the docs

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Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
IANAL❤️

(I haven’t even read the post, I just found funny whatever that mean)

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- ell1e@leminal.space ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It means “I am not a lawyer”, which I really am not 🥺
  
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