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ZDNET's key takeaways
Cal is reluctantly moving away from open source for security.
This move isn't about Mythos, but risks from modern AI tools.
Given the choice, Cal would return to open source.
When Cal was founded in 2022, Bailey Pumfleet, the CEO and co-founder, wrote, "Cal.com would be an open-source project [because] limitations of existing scheduling products could only be solved by open source."
Also: How AI has suddenly become much more useful to open-source developers
Since Cal was successful and now claims to be the largest Next.js project, he was on to something. Today, however, Pumfleet tells me that AI programs such as "Claude Opus can scour the code to find vulnerabilities," so the company is moving the project from the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) to a proprietary license to defend the program's security.
Threat of AI hackers
Many companies have moved from open-source licenses to semi-proprietary licenses for business reasons over the years. It may not have been that smart, but they did it anyway. What Cal is doing is something new and may be disturbing to open-source proponents. Overwhelmed by the threat of AI hackers, it is completely shutting down its commercial open-source program.
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