The end of licenses.

I have a contract with a large company in my hands (on the screen) in which they're offering to transfer all rights to the development I'm required to do under the contract. I'll upload the project source code to their repository server, and they'll pay me.

The problem is, they're hiring me because I know how to do this kind of project. But they want to keep the rights to the resulting work.

So let's imagine a hypothetical situation where the corporation discovers that I've created a similar project for someone else. There are many similar projects out there, but they're downright angry about mine. They start digging around and demanding the source code of the new project from me to prove I've plagiarized it.

Or imagine a similar situation. You need to complete a job, but you discover that the library you need is under a virus license. Like GNU GPL.

I can't obfuscate a project I hand over to a client, even though it's not specified in the contract. By all standards, doing so would be perceived as sabotage. It would also damage my reputation. Plus, there's a chance the client will need some work, and they'll pay me for it, which would extend the contract. And probably can bring me more money. If I ruin my own code I will shot my own leg.

Currently, to rewrite the code for a medium-sized project (I'm developing a solution that indexes your entire website and knowledge base and turns it into a working support tool), I need to develop a few good skills, and I can rewrite my entire project from one framework to another. This would cost me a couple dozen dollars.

The same could be done with an open-source project under an inconvenient license. I'm not saying it's ethical, but I suspect people will do this more and more often. Ideas tend to be reincarnated, and we have no control over that. Even if you're completely lacking in imagination, text transformers will still make the project similar, but not the same. This will be a different project without a stifling license.

For now, this is possible with small projects. But Anthropic created a compiler that built an operating system and ran a game on it for only $25,000, which is a larger project than most libraries that become stumbling blocks for vendors selling routers without disclosing their codebase.

The world of ideas is more real than ever, and we are entering a new phase where licenses and restrictions are becoming more ephemeral and unprovable from a legal perspective.