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Comment by grim_io | Hacker News Reader

Forbidding distillation is like forbidding using a compiler to make another(perhaps better, more efficient) compiler.

Lots of software licenses have “non-compete” clauses that forbid you from using it to develop a competing product. Wouldn’t surprise me if there was a compiler or two out there with that restriction, most likely niche languages.

How the hell is non-compete legal in market economy? Competition is one of its core strengths. Why would anyone let anyone opt out of this, even a little bit?

No country in the world is full free market economy. It is always a spectrum.

We are discussing Chinese models. Now look at how much foreign competition the Chinese government prevents in their domestic market in other industries.

Chinese companies compete ruthlessly between themselves though. That's how they get this good. Full competition with preventing exploitation by foreign countries seems to be working great for them. American and European protectionism of local rent-seekers can't really compete with that.

Those clauses should be illegal.

It's been common in electronic design automation tools to have license terms like that (forbidding use to create a competing product). However, competing companies have often found workarounds, either by finding loopholes or just breaking rules and hoping not to get caught.

If a person were to receive data from someone subjected to such restriction, is the receiver bounded by the same restriction?

balmer told us that gpl is cancer, but true cancer is us model of licensing

Oracle database has a clause forbidding anyone to publish benchmarks of it.

let's call it for what it really is, only companies "entitled to legally stolen data, don't steal from us now" are crying about distilation

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