Malus is not a real project btw, it's a parody:

“Let's end open source together with this one simple trick”

https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026/talk/SUVS7G/feedback/

Malus is translating code into text, and from text back into code.

It gives the illusion of clean room implementation that some companies abuse.

The irony is that ChatGPT/Claude answers are all actually directly derived from open-source code, so...

They accept real money though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6godSEVvcmU

It's not a parody when they accept money and deliver the service.

Dumb Starbucks begs to differ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_Starbucks

And we know they're right, because that lawyer signed a contract on TV saying he'd be liable if they were wrong.

First time I hear about this, it's interesting to have written all of this out.

Now this makes me think of game decompilation projects, which would seem to fall in the same legal area as code that would be generated by something like Malus.

Different code, same end result (binary or api).

We definitely need to know what the legal limits are and should be

Semi-related, someone made basically Malus-for-San-Andreas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBQJYMKmwAs

That's fascinating !

I think it's worth posting as its own submission (if it wasn't already).

i think most game decompilation projects are either openly illegal or operate on "provide your own binary" and build automatic tooling around it

Yes, because we have clear precedent that distributing Art (the assets) is illegal by current copyright law.

But do we have precedent (in any country) that distributing different source code that compiles to the exact same binary is illegal ?

No real reason to do that, they say Claude Code is written by Claude, which means it has no copyright. Just use the code directly

What about trade secrets, breach of contract, etc, etc?

Apparently it's possible to download a whole load of books illegally, but still train AI models on them without those getting pulled after you get found out.

The same reasoning may apply here :P

Yeah, but you don't have trillions of dollars of investments riding on your success, so the rules still apply to you.

Trade secrets once made public don't have any legal protection and I haven't signed any contract with anthropic

They published the code on their own, none of that applies.

The problem is the oauth and their stance on bypassing that. You'd want to use your subscription, and they probably can detect that and ban users. They hold all the power there.

You'd be playing cat and mouse like yt-dlp, but there's probably more value to this code than just a temporary way to milk claude subscriptions.

If you're using a claude subscription you'd just use claude code.

The real value here will be in using other cheap models with the cc harness.

You can already do that though? [1]

[1]: https://docs.ollama.com/integrations/claude-code

I have no interest in Claude Code as a harness, only their models. I'm used to OpenCode at this point and don't want to switch to a proprietary harness.

Lol what? There is no value. OpenCode and Pi and more exist. Arguably Claude Code is the worst client on the market. People use Claude Code not because it's some amazing software. It's to access Opus at a discounted rate.

I don’t think that’s a good comparison. There isn’t anything preventing Anthropic from, say, detecting whether the user is using the exact same system prompt and tool definition as Claude Code and call it a day. Will make developing other apps nearly impossible.

It’s a dynamic, subscription based service, not a static asset like a video.

> detecting whether the user is using the exact same system prompt and tool definition as Claude Code

Why would it be the exact same one? Now that we have the code, it's trivial to have it randomize the prompt a bit on different requests.

Just use one of the distilled claude clones instead https://x.com/0xsero/status/2038021723719688266?s=46

"Approach Sonnet"...

So not even close to Opus, then?

These are a year behind, if not more. And they're probably clunky to use.

Could you use claude via aws bedrock?

Sure, but that'd be charged at API pricing. I'm talking about subscription mode above.

I love the irony on seeing the contribution counter at 0

Who'd have thought, the audience who doesn't want to give back to the opensource community, giving 0 contributions...

It reads attribution really?

Maybe https://github.com/instructkr/claw-code

Oh god, I was so close to believing Malus was a real product and not satire.

It is a real product. They take real payments and deliver on whats promised. Not sure if its an attempt to subvert criticism by using satirical language, or if they truly have so little respect for the open source community.

Yeah... look again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6godSEVvcmU

What are they worried about? Someone taking the company's job? Hehe

Malus is a homophone of "malice." But then again "Claude" is a homophone of "clod."

This has happened before. It was called anon kode.

Eh, the value is the unlimited Max plan which they have rightfully banned from third-party use.

People simply want Opus without fear of billing nightmare.

That’s like 99% of it.