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jeroenhdtoday at 3:15 PM1 replyview on HN

Various versions of Windows have had their source code leaked out in part or almost whole. If Claude produces an exact copy, like LLMs used to do with the fast inverse square root from Doom, Microsoft would have good reason to sue and it'd be on the project to prove that the copyright violation was done by a bot (which makes it legal now).

With the project essentially implementing the entire API method by method, the chances of LLMs repeating some of the leaked source code would be tremendous.

A one-directional fork of ReactOS might be able to make some fast progress for a few people who desperately need certain programs to work, but I don't think the project will benefit from LLMs.


Replies

userulluipestetoday at 7:52 PM

Well, it's not Claude, it's GitHub Copilot (which happens to be owned by none other than... guess who): https://github.com/reactos/reactos/pull/8516

But, if any such model got fed with leaked code, then how is this a specific open-source project's problem and not of all projects (either open-source or private) that got to ever use that model?

Then, (having thought this just now) how can an argument relying on (legally) undisclosed information be used against anything public? Isn't the onus on the party having the undisclosed information to prove that it preceded the public one? How can that precedence be trusted by an independent judging party if the undisclosed information (source-code and systems managing that source code) is and always has been in the hands of the accusing (thus biased) party?