4 ms·

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. "

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."

minimaxir 2mo ago
The README (https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda#license 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.
- slopinthebag 2mo ago
  "We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing"
- mohamedkoubaa 2mo ago
  Imo without the sign off from Reckless it's suspicious
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  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 2mo ago
    Genuine question: if a human did this manually would it be considered derived?
    - recursive-call 2mo ago
      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 2mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design 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 2mo ago
        would using one LLM to create a spec, and another with only access to the spec doc count as clean enough?
        martheen 2mo ago
        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 2mo ago
        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.
- xgulfie 2mo ago
  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
- fithisux 2mo ago
  Is the bank lending you money "in good faith"?
samatman 2mo ago
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]: https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda/commit/cd170a4ea9993cf82461007656e4a782394c5507 https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda/commit/cd170a4ea9993cf8246...
- matheusmoreira 2mo ago
  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.
- anematode 2mo ago
  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: https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2021/our-lawsuit-against-chessbase/ 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.
matheusmoreira 2mo ago
> 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.
- bakugo 2mo ago
  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 2mo ago
    > "Claude, take this code and change the variable names up a bit" Is it a fact that they did that?
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
- Bjartr 2mo ago
  [dead]
- xboxnolifes 2mo ago
  You're attacking his word choice, but the context is clear that it would be protected.
- ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/patents.html#Intro https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/patent... The League for Programming Freedom is opposed to Software Patents
keychera 2mo ago
That comment is not posted yet in the github thread when the article is published
NitpickLawyer 2mo ago
> 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.
- dgellow 2mo ago
  You’re mixing patent and copyright. You can patent an innovative algorithm in the US. And the implementation is of course protected by copyright

minimaxir 2mo ago

The README (https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda#license 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.

slopinthebag 2mo ago
"We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing"
mohamedkoubaa 2mo ago
Imo without the sign off from Reckless it's suspicious
Aurornis 2mo ago
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 2mo ago
  Genuine question: if a human did this manually would it be considered derived?
  - recursive-call 2mo ago
    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 2mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design 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 2mo ago
      would using one LLM to create a spec, and another with only access to the spec doc count as clean enough?
      - martheen 2mo ago
        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 2mo ago
        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.
xgulfie 2mo ago
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
fithisux 2mo ago
Is the bank lending you money "in good faith"?

samatman 2mo ago

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]: https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda/commit/cd170a4ea9993cf82461007656e4a782394c5507 https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda/commit/cd170a4ea9993cf8246...

matheusmoreira 2mo ago
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.
anematode 2mo ago
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: https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2021/our-lawsuit-against-chessbase/ 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.

matheusmoreira 2mo ago

> 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.

bakugo 2mo ago
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 2mo ago
  > "Claude, take this code and change the variable names up a bit" Is it a fact that they did that?
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
Bjartr 2mo ago
[dead]
xboxnolifes 2mo ago
You're attacking his word choice, but the context is clear that it would be protected.
ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/patents.html#Intro https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/patent... The League for Programming Freedom is opposed to Software Patents

keychera 2mo ago

That comment is not posted yet in the github thread when the article is published

NitpickLawyer 2mo ago

> 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.

dgellow 2mo ago
You’re mixing patent and copyright. You can patent an innovative algorithm in the US. And the implementation is of course protected by copyright