Worried that building on someone’s software ends in a lawsuit? My answer is simple: as you build, have AI rewrite that software. A clean-room rewrite. Problem solved.
The principle is an old case: Oracle v. Google, ten years of litigation, and the boundary the courts ultimately drew was — if you don’t use my code, only my behavior, infringement is hard to establish. Rewriting washes the code: same interface, entirely new flesh. Push it further — rewrite everything in Unix philosophy, then again in Rust. New name, no bloodline.
Someone will say rewriting is expensive; just use the original. That’s the other ledger: using the original carries tail risk — the day you’re actually sued, losses are counted in billions. Rewriting’s cost is certain and one-time. Paying a certain small cost to erase an uncertain huge one — that’s insurance. And AI crashed the price of rewriting: a clean room used to mean hiring a team that had never seen the original code, behind a wall. Now it’s a sentence.
Know the boundary, though: a clean room can’t scrub patents or trademarks — it scrubs the expression of code. GPL obligations still get paid. I want everyone who uses my things to open-source theirs, knowing some won’t; that’s a different war.
Take the idea, rewrite the code, and do it openly. That’s not evading the law. That’s respecting the boundary — and freedom inside the boundary is the only real freedom.
