(Yicai) April 17 -- EvoMap, a small Chinese artificial intelligence team, has switched the license of its self-evolving engine Evolver from MIT to the less permissive GPLv3 after accusing Silicon Valley AI lab Nous Research of heavily replicating its code structure for its Hermes Agent.

EvoMap has changed the core module of Evolver to release with obfuscated source code and switched the protocol from MIT to GPLv3, the team announced on April 15. "As a team that believes in the evolution of protocols through collisions, this is the last thing we want to do."

The MIT and GPL licenses allow freedom to use open-sourced software, but the former main requirement is attribution to the original authors, while allowing the use of open-source components in proprietary projects, while the latter imposes stricter rules to ensure derivative works remain open-source. Code obfuscation is the deliberate transformation of readable source code into a version that is more difficult to understand, protecting the code from being reverse-engineered or tampered with.

"When we noticed that Hermes Agent was using language very similar to our earlier concepts, we took a closer look at its code and found that its self-evolving architecture and module structure bore a striking resemblance to Evolver," Fan Maowei, an engineer at EvoMap, told Yicai. Hermes Agent had not cited or credited Evolver anywhere in its source code or public channels, Fan noted.

The self-evolving function of Hermes Agent has a high-level isomorphism with the Evolver engine, with a one-to-one correspondence in the 10-step main loop, a systematic replacement of 12 groups of terms, and zero attribution in seven public materials, according to EvoMap.

"If this behavior cannot be taken seriously, more and more original creators will choose to remain silent, choose to close source and not to share anymore," EvoMap stressed. "This is the biggest loss."

EvoMap launched the open-sourced Evolver on Feb. 1, which climbed to the top of the ClawHub trending chart within 10 minutes of release and accumulated around 2,325 GitHub stars since. In comparison, Hermes Agent has amassed over 85,000 GitHub stars in under two months, with China's Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud rolling out relevant one-click deployment solutions.

"We are the pioneers. Delete your account," Nous Research said on social media before deleting the post. However, co-founder Teknium later commented, "I have literally never heard of this person, their project, or anything they are doing in my life," referring to EvoMap.

Fan raised the possibility that the copying may not have been deliberate, but the work of AI, explaining that AI-assisted coding tools used by developers may draw on open-source projects to generate code that looks entirely new, with variable names and file structures changed, while leaving the core design intact. The developer then adopts it without realizing its origins, Fan pointed out.

The cost of "code washing" has fallen close to zero this year, and disregard for open-source code is becoming the norm, said Zhang Haoyang, founder of EvoMap.

EvoMap has called on the industry to establish new open-source protocols and governance frameworks tailored to AI-assisted development, protecting not just the code, but the ideas and creative thinking behind it.

Editor: Martin Kadiev