this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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I work for a large enterprise firm, our corporate lawyer has told be about this exact scenario so I'm inclined to believe it's real.
That being said, for established projects it won't be that hard to prove the non-AI bit because you have a long commit history that predates the tooling.
Even if you were to assume that all commits after a certain date were AI generated, the OP is slightly off in their attestation that any AI code suddenly makes the whole thing public domain, it would only be if a majority of the codebase was AI coded (and provably so).
So yes all the vibe coded shite is a lost cause, but stuff like Windows isn't in any danger.
I'll stay sceptical until there is court cases supporting this logic as a precedent.
I think that's actually quite sensible, our lawyer wasn't flagging some clear cut legal certainty, he was flagging risk.
Risk can be mitigated, even if the chance of it panning out is slim.
A bit besides the point, but it is pretty crazy to me that we're moving towards a world where if you create by yourself, you're outcompeted, but if you use AI like everyone else, you own nothing.