Live data from Hacker News

sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

simonwillison.net

91–93 of 93 posts

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#91
post #7

Fun fact: because AI written works don't have copyright (in the EU at least) and the level of prompting many people engage in doesn't suffice to create a copyrightable "work" and software licenses require you to actually be able to grant a license using rights you hold on a work, not only are many AI generated "works" not actually protected by copyright but by selling licenses you're actually in breach of contract la…

IMO the real "fun fact" is that supposed "IP monopolists" like Microsoft and Oracle's lawyers are apparently totally fine with this stuff. So obviously people are going to take their lead and not get legal advice from some greasy dweeb at the bottom of HN.

I would strongly recommend against taking legal advice from anyone who is not your lawyer, whether they're a greasy dweeb or working for Microsoft's or Oracle's legal department. Your business goals likely don't align with theirs so I'm not sure what relevance their practices have to you - plus they're very much not in the "selling software" business anymore (contrary to what many people still seem to believe).

I think a better way to make the point you were trying to make is that if you're working in a startup, your code is probably ultimately worthless to begin with because your company's success hinges on its ability to increase its valuation by orders of magnitude between investment rounds, not by delivering value. SpaceX has demonstrated the ridiculous extremes to which this can be done even when you're burning money by having its IPO valued based on tech it doesn't have solving problems that don't exist (yet) with money it doesn't have so there's no law in basketball saying you can't vibecode your way to a successful exit.

But if your job is tied to your ability to grant usage rights on intellectual property you create, you should probably talk to an actual IP and contract lawyer before deciding to vibecode your way through it, rather than just assuming it's fine because Microsoft sells AI services.

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#93

I'm kind of surprised that there is no test case that would have identified the fact that delete_where() leaves the state corrupted. There would be no need to ask Fable if the problem gets identified by the test. And having a test will also catch all future problems that might arise in the same function. So maybe instead of asking Claude what is wrong it would be wiser to invest in test coverage.

The test coverage of sqlite-utils is solid - pytest-cov reports 95% total. The project has 9,973 lines of implementation code and 14,860 of test code.

Here's the delete_where() test: https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/blob/7a52214624ae0e2c...

The problem with the test was that it asserted that the records were deleted inside of the same transaction as the delete, so it missed the changed behavior where the delete didn't commit properly (it had committed properly prior to the new transactions work).

Post reply on HN