alt Hacker NewsYes, this is the reason I've completely stopped releasing any open-source projects. I'm discovering that newer models are somewhat capable of reverse-engineering even compiled WebAssembly, etc. too, so I can feel a sort of "dark forest theory" taking hold. Why publish anything - open or closed - to be ripped off at negligible marginal cost?
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It’s a real problem. I threw it at an old MUD game just to see how hard it is [0] then used differential testing and LLMs to rewrite it [1]. Just seems to be time and money.
[0] https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf...
[1] https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf...
Why does it matter if it is 'ripped off' if you released it as open source anyway? I get that you might want to impose a particular licence, but is that the only reason?
This is pretty much exactly why copyright laws came about in the first place. Why bother creating a book, painting, or other work of art if anyone can trivially copy it and sell it without handing you a dime?
I think refusing to publish open source code right now is the safe bet. I know I won't be publishing anything new until this gets definitively resolved, and will only limit myself to contributing to a handful of existing open source projects.
People are just not realizing this now because it's mostly hobby projects and companies doing it in private, but eventually everyone will realize that LLMs allow almost any software to be reverse engineered for cheap.
See e.g. https://banteg.xyz/posts/crimsonland/ , a single human with the help of LLMs reverse engineered a non-trivial game and rewrote it in another language + graphics lib in 2 weeks.