In the battle between two “agentic” coding instruments — Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex CLI — the latter seems to be fostering extra developer goodwill than the previous. That’s at the very least partly as a result of Anthropic has issued takedown notices to a developer attempting to reverse-engineer Claude Code, which is below a extra restrictive utilization license than Codex CLI.
Claude Code and Codex CLI are dueling instruments that accomplish a lot of the identical factor: permit builders to faucet into the ability of AI fashions working within the cloud to finish varied coding duties. Anthropic and OpenAI launched them inside months of one another — every firm racing to seize beneficial developer mindshare.
The supply code for Codex CLI is obtainable below an Apache 2.0 license that permits for distribution and business use. That’s in distinction to Claude Code, which is tied to Anthropic’s business license. That limits how it may be modified with out specific permission from the corporate.
Anthropic additionally “obfuscated” the supply code for Claude Code. In different phrases, Claude Code’s supply code isn’t available. When a developer de-obfuscated it and launched the supply code on GitHub, Anthropic filed a DMCA criticism — a copyright notification requesting the code’s elimination.
Developers on social media weren’t happy by the transfer, which they stated in contrast unfavorably with OpenAI’s rollout of Codex CLI. In the week or so since Codex CLI’s launch, OpenAI has merged dozens of developer ideas into the instrument’s codebase, together with one which lets Codex CLI faucet AI fashions from rival suppliers — together with Anthropic.
Anthropic didn’t reply to a request for remark. To be truthful to the lab, Claude Code remains to be in beta (and a bit buggy); it’s potential Anthropic will launch the supply code below a permissive license sooner or later. Companies have many causes for obfuscating code, safety issues being one in every of them.
It’s a considerably shocking PR win for OpenAI, which in current months has shied away from open-source releases in favor of proprietary, locked-down merchandise. It could also be emblematic of a broader shift within the lab’s strategy; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this yr stated he believed that the corporate has been on the “mistaken facet of historical past” on the subject of open supply.
