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Comment by arrsingh | Hacker News Reader

It took me a minute to recognize this as satire (thank you HN comments). However it does actually make sense - maybe this could be a way for OSS devs to get paid.

What if we did build a clean room as a service but the proceeds from that didn't go to the "Malus.sh" corporation, but to the owners / maintainers of the OSS being implemented. Maybe all OSS repos should switch to AGPL or some viral license with link to pay-me-to-implement.com. Companies that want to use that package go get their own custom implementation that is under a license strictly for that company and the OSS maintainer gets paid.

I wonder what the MVP for such a thing would look like.

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This site is not satire. You can actually pay on Stripe and it will create code for you. The site is written with satirical language but it is a real service.

Being real doesn't make it not satire.

Yes but all of the commenters think this is a fake site created ironically. It isn't. It is a company doing the evil thing it is mocking.

If doing evil things satirically with extremely poor result, does that become a positive outcome?

I mean maybe you can pay, it can just use some 8B model to give you unsubstantiated crap.

I consider this a form of performance art. To really expose the absurdity of the system, you can't just point at the cracks; you need to actually stick your fingers in.

Yes it's even more effective this way IMO, we will probably see some 11/10 mental gymnastics from people condemning this and failing to apply the same standards to billions dollars corps.

Part of the point here is that the systems are fundamentally broken, more broken than they were before when we already thought they were broken. Some people look at that and think "I suppose we should keep propping this system up as much as possible; the less propping the more immediate harm is caused to people/infrastructure/society".

The people behind this site/talk clearly don't buy into that. The way they see it, a reckoning must come. We might as well get it over with as soon as possible. Rip off the band-aid so to speak. So maybe we should shake the system and show that its falling apart.

Sell the same thing you pretend to be satirizing, and HN it's making it go viral for free, real smart move there guys.

The numbers on the front page is for sure a joke.

Unless they already burned 20000% of their runway on tokens.

.... did you give them money? Brave!

I am only 50% certain that your idea is expanding on the satire, if not: project owners can provide dual licensing. I'm sorry if you are serious and didn't understand you.

You need a legal contract with every contributor to be able to offer dual licensing. That's impractical for some types of projects

Not if you have a CLA. I realize that ship has already sailed for just established projects, but still

I was going to say "this is just a license"

"We offer a commercial license to a worse version of our software that may contain bugs. Enjoy!"

After bogo-sort, it's the most badness-maximising "solution" I've ever come across. Why bother asking for the creator's consent to copy and run the original bytes, when you could instead ask for their consent to have a robot that no one understands and could potentially do anything read a few paragraphs of text describing what those bytes do, imagine how it might work, and try to build something resembling that from scratch, using a trillion or so times more energy.

The energy thing won't sail. A backhoe or front-loader uses far more energy than the equivalent human labor, but having higher energy solutions available is what technological civilization does.

Arguably Cowen's "Great Stagnation" was driven primarily by not embracing higher energy provision in the form of fission.

What about my latest algorithm, VibeSort

    // VibeSort
    let arr = [51,46,72,32,14,27,88,32];

    arr.sort((a,b)=>{
      let response = LLM.query(`Which number is larger, number A:${a} or number B:${b}. Answer using "A" or "B" only, if they are equal, say "C".`);
      if(response.includes('C')) return 0;
      if(response.includes('B')) return -1;
      if(response.includes('A')) return 1;
      return 0;
    });

    console.table(arr);

Copyleft was intended as a principle to keep the software free (as in 'freedom'). Proposing to lock out certain areas of the codebase is directly opposite to this principle.

LOL. Same here. But the footer disclaimer and testimonials gave it away immediately:

> "We had 847 AGPL dependencies blocking our acquisition. MalusCorp liberated them all in 3 weeks. The due diligence team found zero license issues. We closed at $2.3B." - Marcus Wellington III, Former CTO, Definitely Real Corp (Acquired)

> This service is provided "as is" without warranty. MalusCorp is not responsible for any legal consequences, moral implications, or late-night guilt spirals resulting from use of our services.

I almost lost it, didn't realize it was satire until I came back to these comments

This site is not satire. You can actually pay on Stripe and it will create code for you. The site is written with satirical language but it is a real service.

Satire And Performance Art no less.

This could work out great, because the OSS devs can focus on building their project instead of marketing to businesses, running sales processes, consulting on implementation and supporting the implementation. No need to find corporate sponsors either.

If you don't have any contributors, you could just directly relicense without rewriting the whole codebase. If you do, it would be rude to do this.

> satire

I'm sure they've already received offers from investors who wish to build the next torment nexus.

Lol so instead of paying maintainers who already built the thing you want, we instead charge you to use AI to make countless copies of maintainers’ work and direct the profits back to the maintainers? That sounds like true satire.

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