Source code is now a common good, and SaaS is mostly dead

Back in 2023, I wrote a post titled "The upcoming SaaS bubble burst" where I argued that AI would enable individual developers to replicate SaaS products at a fraction of the cost, turning high-margin businesses into commodities. I was wrong about the timeline. It's happening right now. The Legal Hack That Started It All In 1982, a company called Phoenix Technologies wanted to create IBM PC-compatible computers. The problem? IBM's BIOS was copyrighted. Their solution was a "clean room" process: one team reverse-engineered the BIOS and wrote a functional specification, then a completely separate team—who had never seen the original code—implemented a new BIOS from scratch based solely on that specification. It worked. Courts ruled it legal because the second team independently created the code; they never copied anything. This became established legal precedent. Fast forward to March 2025: a satirical (but functional) service called Malus.sh appeared, offering "Clean Room as a Service."