There are subtle legal differences between "free open source" licensing and putting things in the public domain. If you use an open source license, you could forbid LLM training (in licensing law, contrary to all other areas of law, anything that is not granted to licensees is forbidden). Then you can take the big guys (MSFT, Meta, OpenAI, Google) to court if you can demonstrate they violated your terms.
If you place your software into the public domain, any use is fair, including ways to exploit the code or its derivatives not invented at the time of release.
Curiosly, doesn't the GPL even imply that if you pre-tain an LLM with GPLed code and use it to generate code (Claude Code etc.) that all generated code -- as derived intellectual property that it clearly is -- must also be open sourced as per GPL terms? (It would seem in the spirit of the licensors.) Haven't seen this raised or discussed anywhere yet.
Established OSS licenses are all from before anyone imagined that LLMs would come into existence, let alone train on and then generate code. Discrimination on purpose is counter to OSI principles (https://opensource.org/osd):
> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
The GPL argument you describe hinges on making the legal case that LLMs produce "derived works". When the output can't be clearly traced to source input (even the system itself doesn't know how) it becomes rather difficult to argue that in court.
Step back and notice the VAST AMOUNT OF TIME AND ENERGY being wasted here and elsewhere, arguing about who claims to own what. What a giant waste, in an age where digital machines can reproduce any information infinitely for practically free.
Thanks, copyright law, and all the parasites (lawyers, etc) who depend on it for their big, expensive livelihood. Thanks to the government and corporations who have squeezed us all and made it so hard to make a living that everyone feels they now have to monetize and profit from everything to survive. The gift that keep on giving.
If the courts decide to apply the law as you assume the AI companies are all dead. But they are all betting that's not going to be the case. And since so much of the industry is taking the bet with them... The courts will take that into account
Yes. Exactly. As a developer in that case I feel almost violated in my trust in “the internet.” Well it’s even worse, I did not really trust it, but did not think it could be that bad.
LLMs are doing this on an industrial scale.
This also explains decades of questionable decisions of projects like gcc, glibc, gimp (it's right there in the name!), gnome, etc. Richard Stallman is a plant.
Note his recent speech at the Georgia Tech, where he says a lot of very nice things, I'm sure...while wearing some goofy face mask like he's still scared to death of COVID. He is also well known for his lack of personal hygiene and well developed body odor, which is quite curious actually, as at least one person who put this character up for a few days reports that he is a fan of long, hot showers. It's almost like the whole "crusty bearded geek weirdo" thing is just an act, meant to give Free Software a bad reputation.
Reminds me very much of David McGowan's book Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, in which he explains exactly who created the hippie movement and to what end. Exactly like that, in fact.
Great thing so many open source projects have willingly donated all their copyright ownership to the hands of this GNU organization, right? It will be closely guarded and protected, I'm sure.
“Information provenance” could (and I think most likely would, although I’m very unfamiliar with LLM internals) be which sources most plausibly derive an output, so even output that exists today could eventually get proper attribution.
At least today if you know something’s origin, and it’s both obvious and publicly online, you have proof via the Internet Archive.
Yeah, documented *and credited*. I'm not against the idea of disseminating knowledge, and even with my misgivings about LLMs, I wouldn't have said anything if this blog post was simply "LLMs are really useful".
My comment was in response to you essentially saying "all the criticisms of LLMs aren't real, and you should be uncompromisingly proud about using them".
> Moreover there is a strong pattern of the most prolific / known open source developers being NOT against the fact that their code was used for training
I think it's easy to get "echo-chambered" by who you follow online with this, my experience has been the opposite, i don't think it's clear what the reality is.
Yes but you can also ask the developer (wheter in libera.irc, or say if its a foss project on any foss talk, about which books and blogs they followed for code patterns & inspirations & just talk to them)
I do feel like some aspects of this are gonna get eaten away by the black box if we do spec-development imo.
That’s been the fate of many creators since the dawn of time. Kafka explicitly stated that he wanted his works to be burned after his death. So when you’re reading about Gregor’s awkward interactions with his sister, you’re literally consuming the private thoughts of a stranger who stated plainly that he didn’t want them shared with anyone.
Yet people still talk about Kafka’s “contribution to literature” as if it were otherwise, with most never even bothering to ask themselves whether they should be reading that stuff at all.
But it's true much of his work was unpublished when he died and was "rescued" or "stolen", depending on what narrative you prefer.
However, if I was using a more recent/niche/unknown theorem, it would absolutely be considered bad practice not to cite where I got it from.
You can do whatever you want with a gift. Once you release your code as free software, it is no longer yours. Your opinions about what is done with it are irrelevant.
For example: MIT license states has this clause "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."
It stands to reason that if an LLM outputs something based on MIT-licensed code then that output should at least contain that copyright because it's what the original author wished.
And I saw a comment below arguing that knowledge cannot be copyrighted, but the code is an expression of that knowledge and that most certainly can be protected by copyright.
I guess the difference is AI companies bad? This is transformative technology creating trillions in value and democratizing information, all subsidized by VC money. Why would anyone in open source who claims to have noble causes be against this? Because their repo will no longer get stars? Because no one will read their asinine stack overflow answer?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....
One of these is much more important than the other. If the copyright cartels insist on fighting AI, then they must lose decisively.
I feel like this wording isn't great when there are many impactful open source programmers who have explicitly stated that they don't want their code used to train these models and licensed their work in a world where LLMs didn't exist. It wasn't their "gift", it was unwillingly taken from them.
> I'm a programmer, and I use automatic programming. The code I generate in this way is mine. My code, my output, my production. I, and you, can be proud.
I've seen LLMs generate code that I have immediately recognized as being copied a from a book or technical blog post I've read before (e.g. exact same semantics, very similar comment structure and variable names). Even if not legally required, crediting where you got ideas and code from is the least you can do. While LLMs just launder code as completely your own.