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Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

matijacniacki.com

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Re: Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

#71

Post by kennywinker »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #54
duskdozer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If LLM-generated code isn't considered a derivative work of the original, then whether the author was licensed to use the code doesn't matter. But I'm sure the courts will rule in favor of your view regardless. Laundering GPL is in corps' interest and laundering their code is not.

I'm not sure why people are clinging to some fuzzy and stretched out notion of copyright and the GPL in a particular. LLM's do NOT just copy code, with the right prompting, they generate entirely new code which can produce the same results as already existing code - GPLed or not. If copyright is extended to cover such cases we'll have to become all lawyers and do nothing but sue each other because the fuzziness of it…

Tell that to anyone who made sample based music in the late 80s and early 90s.

Re: Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

#72

Post by duskdozer »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #54
duskdozer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If LLM-generated code isn't considered a derivative work of the original, then whether the author was licensed to use the code doesn't matter. But I'm sure the courts will rule in favor of your view regardless. Laundering GPL is in corps' interest and laundering their code is not.

I'm not sure why people are clinging to some fuzzy and stretched out notion of copyright and the GPL in a particular. LLM's do NOT just copy code, with the right prompting, they generate entirely new code which can produce the same results as already existing code - GPLed or not. If copyright is extended to cover such cases we'll have to become all lawyers and do nothing but sue each other because the fuzziness of it…

You either destroy the GPL and proprietary software at the same time, or neither. In a sane world of course.

Re: Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

#73

Post by fc417fc802 »

limagnolia wrote: post #45
skeledrew wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to US courts, the output can't be copyrighted at all. It's automatically in public domain after the "whitewash", regardless of original copyright. https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2026/03/us-supreme-court-de...

Thats not at all what this ruling said. What the courts found was that an AI cannot hold copyright as the author. That copyright requires a human creative element. Not that anything that was generated by an LLM can't be subject to copyright. As an example, a photo taken from a digital camera can be subject to copyright because of the creative element involved in composing and taking the photo. Likewise, source code g…

> Likewise, source code generated by an LLM under the guidance of a human author is likely to be subject to the human authors copyright.

That's probably going to depend an awful lot on the exact details of the guidance. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

> As described above, in many circumstances these outputs will be copyrightable in whole or in part—where AI is used as a tool, and where a human has been able to determine the expressive elements they contain. Prompts alone, however, at this stage are unlikely to satisfy those requirements. The Office continues to monitor technological and legal developments to evaluate any need for a different approach.

But let's assume that the viktor prompts themselves were subject to copyright. In this case those prompts were used to generate documentation which was then used to generate an implementation. It's certainly not a clean room by any stretch of the imagination but is it likely to be deemed sufficient separation? The entire situation seems like a quagmire.

Re: Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

#74

Post by fc417fc802 »

ralferoo wrote: post #38
metalcrow wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misreading of the law. AI cannot hold authorship of code, but no ruling has claimed so far that ai output itself can't be copyrighted (that I know of)

This would suggest that there has been and that there seem little will to revisit it: https://www.theverge.com/policy/887678/supreme-court-ai-art-... That said, the article says "Okay, prompts, great. Are they any interesting? Surprisingly... yes. As an example workflow_discovery contains a full 6-phase recipe for mining business processes out of Slack conversations, something that definitely required time and experi…

Suppose I illicitly get my hands on the source code for a proprietary product. I read through this code I'm not supposed to have. I write up a detailed set of specifications based on it. I hand those specifications off to someone else to do a clean room implementation.

Sure, I didn't have a license for the code that I read. But I'm pretty sure that doesn't taint my coworker's clean room implementation.

Re: Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

#75

Post by fc417fc802 »

dsjoerg wrote: post #50
empath75 wrote: post #39

I just want to point out _how easy it is_ to build any of these tools yourself. I got inspired by nano-claw and built on some of it's ideas to build a whole k8s hosted autonomous agent platform and got it into production in 2 weeks. It's just some api calls and container orchestration. The only hard problem _and it is hard_, is securing it, because you basically have to treat the agents as potentially malicious.

It's because of this hard problem that I'm thinking I should keep using Viktor (getviktor.com) instead of running this OpenViktor. The company may not do a perfect job of security either, but I figure they'll do a better job than I can as a solo practitioner.

I doubt it makes a difference. The primary risk is the agent exfiltrating your private data. That's going to exist either way.

Essentially anything you give it access to should be considered inside the same security boundary. Which is quite unfortunate if you want it to respond to emails for you and also query the internet at large.

Re: Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

#76

Post by jacquesm »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #74
ralferoo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would suggest that there has been and that there seem little will to revisit it: https://www.theverge.com/policy/887678/supreme-court-ai-art-... That said, the article says "Okay, prompts, great. Are they any interesting? Surprisingly... yes. As an example workflow_discovery contains a full 6-phase recipe for mining business processes out of Slack conversations, something that definitely required time and experi…

Suppose I illicitly get my hands on the source code for a proprietary product. I read through this code I'm not supposed to have. I write up a detailed set of specifications based on it. I hand those specifications off to someone else to do a clean room implementation. Sure, I didn't have a license for the code that I read. But I'm pretty sure that doesn't taint my coworker's clean room implementation.

A reminder to never take legal advice from HN.

Re: Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

#77

Post by benterix »

zggf wrote: post #44
xnx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thin wrappers over an LLM has been an extremely popular grift for the past few years.

Agree, and cost of creating those thin wrappers is rapidly approaching zero

Yeah, and with each of these, I always wonder, what's the point?

Re: Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

#79

Post by fc417fc802 »

jacquesm wrote: post #76
fc417fc802 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose I illicitly get my hands on the source code for a proprietary product. I read through this code I'm not supposed to have. I write up a detailed set of specifications based on it. I hand those specifications off to someone else to do a clean room implementation. Sure, I didn't have a license for the code that I read. But I'm pretty sure that doesn't taint my coworker's clean room implementation.

A reminder to never take legal advice from HN.

I don't think anyone was offering any? Merely discussing a confusing new situation that has arisen.

Re: Reverse-engineering Viktor and making it open source

#80

Post by cwillu »

kennywinker wrote: post #71
bigbadfeline wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why people are clinging to some fuzzy and stretched out notion of copyright and the GPL in a particular. LLM's do NOT just copy code, with the right prompting, they generate entirely new code which can produce the same results as already existing code - GPLed or not. If copyright is extended to cover such cases we'll have to become all lawyers and do nothing but sue each other because the fuzziness of it…

Tell that to anyone who made sample based music in the late 80s and early 90s.

If I use metallica samples to make a rendition of happy birthday, the copyright holders of happy birthday aren't suing me for the damages to metallica from my use of their samples; the question of whether my use of the samples is transformative is simply irrelevant to the question at hand.
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