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> I wish there were a “robots.txt” file for Git to disallow certain bots from training on anything I have written. It’s simple. If you are concerned by this,

> I wish there were a “robots.txt” file for Git to disallow certain bots from training on anything I have written. It’s simple. If you are concerned by this, don’t host your repositories on GitHub.

tyingq 5y ago
You would have to not host your code publicly either, right?
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  You can always host is with license that doesn't allow reuse or something
  - tyingq 5y ago
    GitHub mentions that they don't currently look at the license before trawling code. https://twitter.com/NoraDotCodes/status/1412741339771461635 https://twitter.com/NoraDotCodes/status/1412741339771461635 There's also other references that GitHub public repos weren't the only source. They trawl other publicly readable code.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
      You can sue them for using your code if they break the licensing agreement. Contact EFF and they'll set you up with a lawyer.
- HomeDeLaPot 5y ago
  Merely hosting your code publicly seems like it wouldn't give GitHub the right to train AI models on it. You could even say it's against your terms of use. And to do it, they would have to go out of their way to find your repo on the web and clone it—unlikely. My impression (NOT A LAWYER) is that by hosting your code in a public repo on GitHub, you agree to their terms and give them the right to "read" your code including training AI models on it. Or at least that's what they're banking on. Go host on Sourcehut or self-host with Gitea, and I would think it unlikely (but not impossible) that any big company would use your code to train their AI.
  - toastal 5y ago
    I wish it were easier to convince projects I like and want to help migrate for the same reason. Committing to their repos does not put me in the clear--including mere mirrors.
  - sobellian 5y ago
    I would think that training a NN falls squarely in fair use.
  - hnfong 5y ago
    It's not even very clear whether training an AI on OSS code is violation of those licenses. So unless you make your code public clearly under a proprietary license that clearly rejects such use, you can't really prevent people from doing that anyway. Just imagine, there's really nothing preventing people from scraping your blog to train their natural language processing AI or whatever, why would code be any different? Even if you put up a big sign saying you don't consent to having your data ingested by a neural network, I doubt it will get noticed anyway... People have been taking large OSS codebases (eg. Linux kernel) for various statistical analyses. AI is just doing the same thing in a more sophisticated manner.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      I bet if I trained an AI on some vocalist and released an album I'd get some legal mayhem. I do concede it might go differently for code, but none of these issues are crystal clear for me.

tyingq 5y ago

You would have to not host your code publicly either, right?

nextlevelwizard 5y ago
You can always host is with license that doesn't allow reuse or something
- tyingq 5y ago
  GitHub mentions that they don't currently look at the license before trawling code. https://twitter.com/NoraDotCodes/status/1412741339771461635 https://twitter.com/NoraDotCodes/status/1412741339771461635 There's also other references that GitHub public repos weren't the only source. They trawl other publicly readable code.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
    You can sue them for using your code if they break the licensing agreement. Contact EFF and they'll set you up with a lawyer.
HomeDeLaPot 5y ago
Merely hosting your code publicly seems like it wouldn't give GitHub the right to train AI models on it. You could even say it's against your terms of use. And to do it, they would have to go out of their way to find your repo on the web and clone it—unlikely. My impression (NOT A LAWYER) is that by hosting your code in a public repo on GitHub, you agree to their terms and give them the right to "read" your code including training AI models on it. Or at least that's what they're banking on. Go host on Sourcehut or self-host with Gitea, and I would think it unlikely (but not impossible) that any big company would use your code to train their AI.
- toastal 5y ago
  I wish it were easier to convince projects I like and want to help migrate for the same reason. Committing to their repos does not put me in the clear--including mere mirrors.
- sobellian 5y ago
  I would think that training a NN falls squarely in fair use.
- hnfong 5y ago
  It's not even very clear whether training an AI on OSS code is violation of those licenses. So unless you make your code public clearly under a proprietary license that clearly rejects such use, you can't really prevent people from doing that anyway. Just imagine, there's really nothing preventing people from scraping your blog to train their natural language processing AI or whatever, why would code be any different? Even if you put up a big sign saying you don't consent to having your data ingested by a neural network, I doubt it will get noticed anyway... People have been taking large OSS codebases (eg. Linux kernel) for various statistical analyses. AI is just doing the same thing in a more sophisticated manner.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    I bet if I trained an AI on some vocalist and released an album I'd get some legal mayhem. I do concede it might go differently for code, but none of these issues are crystal clear for me.