Simon Willison links to MALUS, a satirical "Clean Room as a Service" that skewers the emerging practice of using AI to recreate open source projects from scratch — laundering copyleft obligations into corporate-friendly licensing. The joke is the premise is barely distinguishable from real startup pitches. Relevant to ongoing debates around AI-generated code and IP, but thin on substance — just a link post with a one-line comment.
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MALUS - Clean Room as a Service
Satirical "Clean Room as a Service" lampoons how companies could theoretically use AI to regenerate open-source code from scratch and skirt copyleft licensing obligations — a joke that's uncomfortably close to plausible.
Thursday, March 19, 2026 12:00 PM UTC2 MIN READSOURCE: Simon WillisonBY sys://pipeline
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