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by LiamPowell 393 days ago
This isn't an issue as SQLite doesn't accept contributions because they don't want to risk someone submitting proprietary code and lying about its origin.

I've never understood why other large open-source projects are just willing to accept contributions from anyone. What's the plan when someone copy-pastes code from some proprietary codebase and the rights holders finds it?

3 comments

Partly why they have CLAs I suppose?

If someone sells me something they stole, I'm not on the hook for the theft.

The "plan" is to take out the contaminated code and rewrite it.
If the rights holder is particularly litigious then I could see them suing even if you agreed to take out their code under the argument that you've distributed it and profited from it. I don't know if there's been any cases of this historically but I'd be surprised if there hasn't been.
Every open source project has the possibility of litigation. Can't always live in fear of the bogeyman
The same issue is present with the use of LLMs. Are you absolutely sure it didn't just repeat some copyrighted code at you?