I was watching a video talking about how a world before copyright allowed innovation to spread quickly and allowed people miles away to iterate faster. Even if LLMs reproducing feature perfect software is deemed a copyright violation, people will just do it privately and use the software themselves.
I’m personally waiting for LLMs to get so good that I can make music and movies based on my favorite ones. I probably could never release it to the public, but being able to make it and enjoy it myself would be amazing.
Another thing that can help contextualize this phenomenon is mix tapes, which are fair use in the US.
Modifying/modding/remixing software was simply not as feasible as music, but LLMs made it possible.
There is something similar happening in the game modding communities. One of my favorite streamers had claude write a little mod to change the UI of KSP so it kept with the larger fanciful theme of the game, over being so sci-fi-ish. He didn't like, he changed it, he's probably not going to release it because of sensitivity in the broader gaming ecosystem.
I have agents maintaining several patches to my main tools, not forking, not sharing (some have no interest), personal adjustments