Skip to main content
Original: Simon Willison · 12/03/2026

​
Summary

The article humorously critiques the concept of ‘vibe-porting’ licenses, presenting a fictional service that creates legally distinct code from open source projects.

​
Key Insights

“Finally, liberation from open source license obligations.” — Describing the fictional service’s promise of removing licensing constraints.
“Legally distinct code with corporate-friendly licensing.” — Highlighting the absurdity of the service’s offerings.
“I admit it took me a moment to confirm that this was a joke.” — Reflecting on the satirical nature of the article.

​
Topics

​
Full Article

12th March 2026 - Link Blog MALUS - Clean Room as a Service (via) Brutal satire on the whole vibe-porting license washing thing (previously): Finally, liberation from open source license obligations. Our proprietary AI robots independently recreate any open source project from scratch. The result? Legally distinct code with corporate-friendly licensing. No attribution. No copyleft. No problems.. I admit it took me a moment to confirm that this was a joke. Just too on-the-nose. Posted 12th March 2026 at 8:08 pm

Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code?

Simon Willison · explanation · 57% similar

Can a LLM convert C, to ASM to specs and then to a working Z/80 Speccy tape? Yes.

Geoffrey Huntley · explanation · 52% similar

[AINews] Autoresearch: Sparks of Recursive Self Improvement

Swyx · explanation · 52% similar
Originally published at https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/12/malus/#atom-everything.