Thread

Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

397 points · 461 comments · lladnar

podgietaru · 1785957048 · focus · HN ↗
The article just straight up doesn't mention the context of the Github Thread, which is about the guy lifting ideas from other engines and copy-washing them.
"Do you genuinely believe changes like cd170a4 make the code somehow not derived from Reckless anymore? It appears to me like it's just trying to obfuscate its origins, to make it easier to appeal to plausible deniability. The reality is, coda 100% has code derived from AGPL or unlicensed engines in it, and pretending otherwise won't convince anyone other than maybe yourself. This, combined with the fact you conveniently moved the plagiarism roadmaps to a private repo mere days after people started raising concerns about it, reads to me like you're not at all concerned with actually using code fairly, and much more with being able to claim that you are, backed up by these nonsense "cleanup" commits."
1. minimaxir · 1785957645 · focus · HN ↗
  The README (<a href="https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda#license" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda#license) addresses concerns about copyright in good faith and better than most agentic-driven repos:
  > After our initial 0.9.0 pre-release (July 2026), community feedback raised that Coda contained AGPL-licensed code. This prompted a full audit of our codebase and dependencies, and steps to correct what it found. We now believe Coda complies with all applicable licenses. If you have any concern, please open a GitHub issue with the details and we'll happily investigate.
  1. slopinthebag · 1785958126 · focus · HN ↗
    "We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing"
  2. mohamedkoubaa · 1785958629 · focus · HN ↗
    Imo without the sign off from Reckless it's suspicious
  3. Aurornis · 1785959426 · focus · HN ↗
    The debate is about whether or not the new code qualifies as derived.
    They can remove all of the literal code matches from the codebase, but if it was written by having an LLM study the original code and then write something similar, it's hard to argue it's not a derivative work.
    ncphillips · 1785959610 · focus · HN ↗
    Genuine question: if a human did this manually would it be considered derived?
    recursive-call · 1785960087 · focus · HN ↗
    In my opinion yes. Just like if you watch a Bob Ross episode and copy all his brushstrokes, you have made a derivative (in the literal sense of the word) of his painting.
    Aurornis · 1785960149 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design
    There is a lot of legal history of doing new designs with influence from reverse engineered sources. The basic rule is that you can't have someone familiar with the original code involved with writing the new code.
    LLMs are a new area, but I would expect that feeding the original source into an LLM context and saying "Write this, but different" wouldn't qualify as a clean-room design. There isn't enough general removal from the original subject matter.
    HeWhoLurksLate · 1785981756 · focus · HN ↗
    would using one LLM to create a spec, and another with only access to the spec doc count as clean enough?
    martheen · 1785986572 · focus · HN ↗
    Only if the second LLM can be proven to never got trained/distilled from a model that trained on the original source code.
    Probably impossible if the original code is publicly available since most code oriented LLM just gobble them all.
    mcv · 1786014457 · focus · HN ↗
    I have done this. Despite using Fable for the spec, and having it double-check the spec a couple of times, it still wasn't airtight. And at some point, the implementing LLM accessed one file of the original code on the Web.
    I have by now deviated quite a bit from the original (well, original...) spec.
    bilkow · 1785982998 · focus · HN ↗
    Specifically about "humans": my understanding is that Clean-room design is not a requirement and the "Case law" section on your Wikipedia link explains that and has examples.
    How and whether the same principles can be applied to LLMs, I have no idea. I imagine it would involve discussions about creativity, for example.
    Not a lawyer.
    AnthonyMouse · 1785994503 · focus · HN ↗
    The thing that happened with "clean-room design" is that one company did it and the court said it was allowed. Companies are risk averse. Once they know one thing is yes and something else is maybe, they go with the yes, right? With the result that the supply of court cases where something other than that happened tends to dry up, leaving the other alternatives to stay as maybe.
    If some people have now decided they're not going to blink in the face of a risk, we might get to find out whether some of the maybes turn out to be a yes or a no.
    smallerize · 1785963041 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, absolutely. The defense there is "clean room reimplementation ". If anything, the use of an LLM would be stronger than a human doing the copying. (Assuming American jurisdiction!)
    zarzavat · 1785982275 · focus · HN ↗
    Clean room implementation is not a concept in copyright law. It's a defensive legal strategy to avoid expensive lawsuits.
    Copyright law does not require a clean room implementation when copying non-copyrightable elements of a work, such as algorithms.
    lelanthran · 1785964479 · focus · HN ↗
    Mechanical transformation is always considered derived.
    The difference is that if humans do it, there's plausible deniability that it is derived.
    I mean, even when humans do it, we still do clean room engineering.
    It goes further though: LLMs are just a tool, and tools don't get rights, humans do.
    Humans having the right to learn from a few dozen books and projects is not the same as a tool that infers output using all copyrighted works know to man.
    sailfast · 1785986881 · focus · HN ↗
    It could be the same act - but not necessarily legally the same because of the actor.
    ButlerianJihad · 1785982522 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.paulaoki.com/.admin/930108.oppose.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.paulaoki.com/.admin/930108.oppose.html
    Not content to destroy one potential competitor, USL also seeks to keep a stranglehold on the entire market by claiming that everyone who has had ever had access to UNIX source code a group that include~ most experienced programmers in the industry is "mentally contaminated" and may not develop any functionally similar product, without first purchasing an exorbitantly expensive license from USL. In accordance with this argument, USL requests this Court to prohibit BSDI from hiring anyone who has had access to UNIX source code. USL's request would not only require BSDI to fire all of its current employees, but would make it difficult to find any qualified replacements. Having chosen to widely disseminate its source code in order to build a market for its product and having succeeded in making it an industry standard, USL cannot now claim that everyone with knowledge of it is restricted from developing competing products.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc.....
    phoghed · 1786039710 · focus · HN ↗
    Would have to be proven in court. Look up history of cases and settlements for GPL violations and it quickly becomes apparent that it’s relatively toothless and mostly license theater.
    bandrami · 1785997893 · focus · HN ↗
    I still think this question is a future minefield, as well as the question of what happens if an LLM outputs a patented algorithm
    int0x29 · 1786000015 · focus · HN ↗
    This is not really a question. Accidental patent infringement is still patent infringement. Just because you used new trendy technology to do it does not mean that it isn't infringement.
  4. xgulfie · 1785959839 · focus · HN ↗
    It's so weird that they think they have to comply with copyright in this case, but not in the case of any other license
  5. fithisux · 1786014116 · focus · HN ↗
    Is the bank lending you money "in good faith"?
2. samatman · 1785959323 · focus · HN ↗
  Keeping in mind that I'm going strictly off the commit[0], a bit-packing layout is very much the kind of thing which is not subject to copyright in the first place. Neither are algorithms. Ideas, in general, are not subject to copyright: expression is.
  So "lifting ideas from other engines", as you yourself put it, is entirely licit, no matter how you do it. _Should_ you credit others when so doing? I err on the side of yes, on that question. _Must_ you? No, there is no such requirement, this is not academic publishing. Does it constitute violation of license? Absolutely not. Straightforwardly, no. Furthermore, it _should not_, we would not like the result of that.
  Think: SCO suing Linus Torvalds over his use of a.out: and winning. It would be bad. Even though I understand the reasons for it, it's still eerie to me to see hackers coming down hard on a side of an issue we spend decades passionately defending the other side of.
  As I lead this post with: maybe there's something in the repo which is infringing, it's quite possible that commit doesn't tell the whole story. If so, keep in mind that I don't know that, and am able to change my opinion in the face of new evidence.
  Based on what I _have_ seen, no: you do not get to lock down a bit-packing pattern just because you're the first to come up with it. Nor should you have that right.
  [0]: <a href="https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda/commit/cd170a4ea9993cf82461007656e4a782394c5507" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda/commit/cd170a4ea9993cf8246...
  1. matheusmoreira · 1785960342 · focus · HN ↗
    No idea why you're getting downvoted. You're right.
    > it's still eerie to me to see hackers coming down hard on a side of an issue we spend decades passionately defending the other side of
    Yeah, it's surreal. It's not just intellectual property either, Hackers have already started complaining about automation now too.
    Computers must have replaced tens of millions of jobs. It's the ultimate job destroyer, since it allows capital to do more with less. Automating me, a doctor, out of his job is essentially the holy grail of Hacker News.
    But when hackers are automated away, then suddenly it's a crime against humanity.
  2. anematode · 1785960640 · focus · HN ↗
    You'll notice I didn't mention copyright, and that's because I don't think it's relevant. I think your analysis is correct. Keep in mind too that Stockfish – the engine I work on, although I wasn't at the time – was the subject of a high-profile defense of the GPL in Germany: <a href="https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2021/our-lawsuit-against-chessbase/" rel="nofollow">https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2021/our-lawsuit-against-che.... That case was different as it involved wholesale copying of the source code, rather than porting ideas. Ideas shouldn't be copyrightable.
    But copyright and plagiarism are orthogonal, and questions of morality are much more tied to the latter. It would be illegal (in the United States) for me to publish a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but not immoral. It was not immoral, in my view, for Aaron Swartz to try to liberate JSTor articles.
    That doesn't make plagiarism acceptable, either. And therefore, I'm willing to call it out when I see it.
    samatman · 1785961729 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    anematode · 1785962335 · focus · HN ↗
    It's a dog-eat-dog world, eh? :)
    Anyway, I don't see how this relates to the original discussion. Nor do I think the irony is particularly deep: As far as I'm aware, Deep Blue didn't plagiarize Kasparov, and indeed alpha-beta search is quite different than how humans calculate. But yes, I'd have been very demoralized if I were Kasparov, although he seems to be doing well now.
    Edit: Regarding being mean-spirited, sorry to say, but I don't particularly care for the feelings of someone who has been repeatedly dishonest and used LLMs to respond to people engaging in good faith. That latter path has been exhausted now.
    To co-opt your conflation of legality and morality: free speech, mf!
  3. didibus · 1785986777 · focus · HN ↗
    I think that's true, but I'm not sure if this would characterize itself as "lifting ideas". I mean, it's one thing to personally take the idea and re-implement it yourself elsewhere. But I have to believe there could be an argument, that having an inference algorithm take the original source and re-implement it in the context of your engine might count as derivative work.
    A particular work is deliberately supplied at inference time so the system can recreate or adapt it for another environment. It resembles commissioning a translation, port, or derivative adaptation through an automated tool, even where the output is not verbatim, so it seems it could hold a candle in court.
    You have a few scenarios now up for legal debate:
    1. Is training a model using copyrighted material fair use? 2. A model outputting chunks of identical coryrighted code from it's training material 3. A model being given in it's prompt copyrighted source code, and asked to implement the same in a new source code.
    I think #1 and #2 have open legal battles on it, but #3, which seems to be this scenario, is new to me, and I feel it could have legal ground for being considered infringing on the copyright.
    Sidenote: how is your account "samatman" and created "April 24, 2010", that's a really funny coincidence
    robinsonb5 · 1785998948 · focus · HN ↗
    Whatever the legal outcome, whether it's ultimately decided that people can or can't "get away" with using LLMs to license-launder code, it's undoubtedly a dick move.
3. matheusmoreira · 1785959766 · focus · HN ↗
  > lifting ideas
  It's not like ideas are protected by copyright though. Copyright protects the specific expression of the idea, not the idea itself. Anyone can "lift ideas" from anyone else, including proprietary software.
  1. bakugo · 1785960622 · focus · HN ↗
    Except "Claude, take this code and change the variable names up a bit" is not lifting ideas, and you would not get away with doing that to software belonging to a company with a competent legal department.
    matheusmoreira · 1785962027 · focus · HN ↗
    > "Claude, take this code and change the variable names up a bit"
    Is it a fact that they did that?
    [deleted] · 1785995706 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  2. Bjartr · 1785961104 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  3. xboxnolifes · 1785961461 · focus · HN ↗
    You're attacking his word choice, but the context is clear that it would be protected.
  4. ButlerianJihad · 1785988914 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/patents.html#Intro" rel="nofollow">https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/patent...
    The League for Programming Freedom is opposed to Software Patents
4. keychera · 1785984021 · focus · HN ↗
  That comment is not posted yet in the github thread when the article is published
5. NitpickLawyer · 1785992669 · focus · HN ↗
  > lifting ideas from other engines and copy-washing them.
  You cannot copyright ideas. And that's a good thing. Remember the "one click checkout patent" saga? That is bad for everyone involved. We don't want that, as an industry.
  1. dgellow · 1785997711 · focus · HN ↗
    You’re mixing patent and copyright. You can patent an innovative algorithm in the US. And the implementation is of course protected by copyright

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