Open source is dead. And no, I'm not

talking about the AI slop apocalypse PR

epidemic that has been going on for the

last 6 months. I'm talking about

something much much much more serious.

And the weirdest part about this whole

thing, it's being disguised as a joke.

We're only joking. Listen here, pal.

Even the Bible hates this behavior. And

this was from 3,000 years ago. Ain't

nobody likes this. All right. To

understand what's going on, may I

present to you first the website Malice

Liberate opensource. Now to understand

what is happening and what's going on

behind all this, you got to know a

little bit of history. And the first

piece of history starts right here.

Baker versus Seldon. Now, effectively

what happened is that Baker studied

everything that Seldon did and then

recreated effectively Seldon's

accounting work and his new novel

principles and was able to sell his own

version of the book. Now, of course,

this went off into the courts. The

courts eventually reached the Supreme

Court and the Supreme Court said, "Hey,

you can copyright expressions, but you

cannot copyright ideas." This is

important. Again, in the same talk and

also on Malice's website is another very

important piece of lore from our

history. In 1984, a company called

Phoenix Technologies did a very kind of

clever thing. Effectively, at one point,

IBM had a strangle hold on the entire

computing like ecosystem. And so what

Phoenix Technologies did is that they

hired an engineer that would go through

and effectively create a perfect spec to

match exactly how the BIOS would operate

from IBM. And then a second engineer

would just simply implement the spec,

never interacting with IBM, never

attempting to steal any information,

just simply looking at the spec and

copying its behavior. And this allowed

Phoenix Technologies to actually write

its own version of some IBM firmware.

And then legally they were given the

thumbs up. Yes, that is okay. Legally

this is called clean room engineering.

Effectively you create a buffer between

person who understands the technology

and person who implements the

technology. And by having this legally

distinct separation, you prevent

yourself from falling into a bunch of

issues. Hopefully now it's a little bit

more obvious where I'm going at this

point. Robot A reads the documentation,

understands the code, sees what's going

on, generates a specification. Robot B

implements from just the spec package

liberated. What this means is that there

are packages out in the ecosystem that

have say GPL licenses. If you're not

familiar with copy left or GPL,

effectively what happens is that if you

use a GPL package, you must make your

package open source for everybody and

you must have a GPL license. It is a

viral licensing. So say you wanted this

package and you're like, "Oo, I could

really use that. that would be pivotal

for my project. But I also don't want

GPL. This is a commercial project. Well,

what could I do? I could AI clean room

engineer that. And this is exactly what

was built by these two right here. They

gave an entire presentation. It's up on

YouTube and they call it the death of

open source where they argue quite

thoroughly of all the dangers of open

source, why effectively there's a bunch

of problems with it, why licenses can be

pretty bad, and why copyright law is

actually in their favor. Nolan right

here proposes this idea of clean room as

a service. So if you actually go to the

website Malice, I just assumed this was

just a joke, right? The name it's way

too on the nose. It seems pretty

obvious. The comments are from

Wellington bottomline stockholder and

offshore, right? Like this is all

extremely on the nose. But here's the

thing. I bought the service. I got is

number copied. I got leftpad copied.

This is the exact code that it produced.

And yes, this passes the 111 test for

JavaScript is number. Now, your obvious

first reaction to everything I'm saying.

I know it's been a lot. Your first

reaction is JavaScript has an is number

package that you have to download and

execute to understand what a number is.

Yes. Yes, it is true. And second, yes,

this is a potential implementation which

is entirely more than one line of code.

I JavaScript is truly a cursed language.

Okay, it is just the worst. But I think

the second and more important reaction

is, okay, this was obviously uh an

elaborate setup to kind of show the

weakness of our current copyright law

and what's happening within open source.

You can now have commercial entities

effectively copy anything with AI and

just say, "Yeah, we don't care about

licenses." Oh, sorry. Is that GPL? More

like goodbye. More like don't give a

licensing going on right here. And

there is legally apparently nothing we

can do about it. That is just the state

of affairs. You put your code on the

internet, a robot can write a

specification and a second robot can

just straight up snatch it. Clean room

engineering, baby. As you can imagine, I

I feel a lot of things, right? I feel a

lot of upsetness towards this entire

experience. Even just reading it, it

just feels very upsetting because for

me, it's not really a joke. Like, yes, I

believe these guys for setting up it as

a joke. It's such an elaborate joke that

they even took money. For me, that's

typically when the I'm just joking phase

stops being a joke. But you must

understand that this is what's

happening. Look at this tweet from Sammy

Samboy right here. I have so much

gratitude to the people who wrote

extremely complex software character by

character. It already feels difficult to

remember how much effort it really took.

Thank you for getting us to this point

because you know what what comes after,

right? Great, huh? I mean, by the way,

somebody somebody needs to be monitoring

some of these tweets over at Open AI and

be like, "Yo, bro, just don't say that."

Okay, they Okay, you just got to

remember that public perception of AI is

in the actual toilet. It's been falling

among developers. It's been falling

among game developers. It's been falling

among the entire public. You just don't,

whatever you do, don't say something

stupid like, "Thanking everybody for

their hard work. Now I'm going to go

make billions of dollars off of you."

Just don't do that. That's the one thing

you can't do. And Sam's like, "Hold my

Apple teeny. I got a tweet to send,

brother. This is so bad. This is a real

thing. This is not just a proof of

concept. This actually works. You can

actually go and pay money right now and

go liberate whatever package you want.

All you need to do is have a

package.json and bam, it's yours. Now,

new license, new code, new you. Sure,

your your soul might be a little bit in

trouble, but hey, you get that you get

those sweet corporate dollars. Now,

here's the part that I kind of have with

the joking. like yes uh the these two

went off and set up this whole kind of

experiment saying hey this is what we're

doing it's a fun joke but then they also

might be making some money off of it. I

don't know where the joke, you know,

like when does the joke stop being a

joke? Like when do you become the

biblical idiot that says, "Bro, I was

just joking." And even more so at this

point, even if they take down the site,

somebody's going to put it back up,

somebody's going to make the money. And

this is actually their literal argument,

which is somebody is going to make the

money off of this, so why not be us? And

then they actually do. This is the world

we're going to live in. And I do want to

talk about kind of a more important

point for just a quick second. Okay? I

know this is not what we do around here,

but I do have kind of like a follow-up

worry that I've just been thinking a lot

about. You see, in 2013, 2012, there was

a group of people who made React. You

know that I have not the highest

opinions about React, but at the time it

was revolutionary, right? Someone made

this technology which made a great leap

forward in UI programming. I don't think

React could be made today. I don't think

the company that produced React has any

appetite for that type of engineering.

Follow up. I don't think any of the

engineers that are focused on trying to

make some big sort of impact in the

engineering world care a dime about

programming anymore. I am not sure if

we're going to see a world that actually

gets new technology. This is it. To me,

this is the final place. This is where

we're at. And not only that, thank you.

We have the death of open- source

software. The corporations will in fact

get what they want, one license change

at a time. Now, what I'm actually hoping

for, the actual outcome of this is that

Malice, this Malice Corporation is so

egregious and enough people freak out,

right, that they end up having some sort

of law change saying, "Hey, AI clean

room engineering in fact does not

count." My guess is that will never

happen. But I assume that's the actual

goal. That's the I was just joking

behind all this. What which is I'm not

joking. I actually want to create a

change. And the only kind of way I can

see a change happening is by creating

such a stir, creating such an outrage

that government officials have to step

in and make up some law. All right,

that's it. That's all I got to talk to

you about. Uh, happy open source is dead

day. I guess this is actually like my

third time recording this video. Uh, the

reason being is that I actually got too

frustrated the other two times. Like I

really I I really dislike this strongly.

It makes me it makes me angry on the

inside. You know what I mean? Little a

little little freef fall of emotional

parachuting going on right now. Okay.

Quite turbulent. Buffeted by a lot OF

EMOTIONS. I'M NOT HAVING FUN RIGHT NOW.

The name is the primogen. Hey, is that

http? Get that out of here. That's not

how we order coffee. We order coffee via

ssh terminal.shop. Yeah. You want a real

experience. You want real coffee. You

want awesome subscriptions so you never

have to remember again. Oh, you want

exclusive blends with exclusive coffee

and exclusive content? Then check out

CRON. You don't know what SSH is?

>> Well, maybe the coffee is not for you.

Living the dream.