Thread

1. 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:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;adamtwiss&#x2F;coda#license" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;adamtwiss&#x2F;coda#license) addresses concerns about copyright in good faith and better than most agentic-driven repos:

      &gt; 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&#x27;ll happily investigate.

      1. 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&#x27;s hard to argue it&#x27;s not a derivative work.

         1. ncphillips · 1785959610 · focus · HN ↗

            Genuine question: if a human did this manually would it be considered derived?

            1. Aurornis · 1785960149 · focus · HN ↗

               <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Clean-room_design" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;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&#x27;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 &quot;Write this, but different&quot; wouldn&#x27;t qualify as a clean-room design. There isn&#x27;t enough general removal from the original subject matter.

               1. 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?

                  1. martheen · 1785986572 · focus · HN ↗

                     Only if the second LLM can be proven to never got trained&#x2F;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.

                  2. 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&#x27;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.

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