6 ms·

Ask HN: License to prohibit training of systems like Microsoft Copilot

39 points by bugfix-66 4y ago

We want to modify the BSD 2-Clause Open Source License to explicitly prohibit the use of the licensed software in the training of systems like Microsoft's Copilot. We also want to prohibit use during inference. Question: How should the third clause be worded, below? The No-AI 3-Clause Open Source Software License Copyright (C) <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. Use in source or binary forms for the construction or operation of predictive software generation systems is prohibited. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. The above is a verbatim (word-for-word) copy of the BSD 2-Clause Open Source License, except for its title and the addition of a third clause: 3. Use in source or binary forms for the construction or operation of predictive software generation systems is prohibited. Thanks!

gshdiwuehdhwu 4y ago
agpl3 they will have to open source all code and data that produced the derivative work. why reinvent the wheel?
- bugfix-66 4y ago
  We need a more permissive MIT- or BSD-style license. The GPL is good for some purposes, but too restrictive for others.
  - t-3 4y ago
    What is the use-case for a permissive license that does not permit use by code-fragment-compiler AI systems?
    - bugfix-66 4y ago
      I use MIT- and BSD-licensed code at work in a closed-source commercial system. The documentation for our system acknowledges our use of the open-source code, and I'm sure the authors are proud to be part of our codebase (with attribution). That's the use-case.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Other than the ZFS-on-Linux situation (which is only a problem because the CDDL was intentionally written to cause it), what is the GPL "too restrictive" for? In the ideal world, literally all software would be AGPLv3.
    - Xymist 4y ago
      In the ideal world, literally all software would be CC-0. Copilot is an example of something which should exist, in this form or optimally a much better one. Copyright is an example of something which should not exist, in any form. As with patents, it's fundamentally a drag on innovation and development.
      - josephcsible 4y ago
        > In the ideal world, literally all software would be CC-0. No, because then companies would release heavily obfuscated binaries of everything and not provide the source, or worse, require you to run everything in their cloud and never release anything to you.
ronsor 4y ago
These AI systems are all riding on fair use anyway (at least for now), so it doesn't matter what license you choose because they're never accepting it in the first place.
- bugfix-66 4y ago
  Law-abiding companies like Microsoft won't knowingly violate a license. My understanding is that Microsoft makes an effort to exclude all GPL software from its training. (Is this true?) What we need is a more permissive MIT- or BSD-style license that defeats Copilot. We just need to convince law-abiding companies that they must not use the code.
  - ronsor 4y ago
    Where did Microsoft say that GPL code was excluded from the training dataset? Since not including attribution is already a violation of MIT/BSD-style licenses, I don't think MS is discouraged by violating licenses.
    - bugfix-66 4y ago
      Unfortunately, I cannot find support for my claim that Microsoft excludes GPL-licensed code.
dpifke 4y ago
The problem with making up your own license clause is that responsible companies now need to pay their lawyers to review it if they want to use your software. This is going to exclude a lot of users who don't want to pay for that review, rather than just the ones who'd use it for purposes you want to prohibit.
- bugfix-66 4y ago
  Well, what are our options? What else can we do to protect ourselves from Microsoft Copilot?
  - speedgoose 4y ago
    Do we have to protect ourselves? I understand that some may disagree that training AI with copyrighted data is fair use, but protecting? If you are scared that many companies will steal open source code and not give anything back, well, it’s already the case. If you are scared to be replaced by an IA, forbidding the AI doesn’t seem te be the right approach. It’s too late and you should perhaps start to use it and improve it instead of fighting it.
- t-3 4y ago
  If someone is against CoPilot-style use of their code, would they want commercial organizations using it? It seems like such a hurdle would be quite attractive for many projects.
waste_monk 4y ago
From what I vaguely understand, part of the GitHub terms of service is granting GitHub / Microsoft various rights to store, index, etc. the contents of your repositories. That is, in addition to whatever license you choose to use for your project, you are granting GH/MS additional rights on top of that (if they are not already granted by the project license). While I am not a lawyer / licensing expert, I would be very surprised if the terms of service did not include rights or some other loophole allowing it to be used for training machine learning systems[1]. So the actual license you'd use is probably irrelevant while it's hosted on GitHub. [1] A paragraph from section D4 here https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#d-user-generated-content https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... states: "We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like copy it to our database and make backups; show it to you and other users; parse it into a search index or otherwise analyze it on our servers; share it with other users; and perform it, in case Your Content is something like music or video." I'd guess CoPilot would be covered by either the parsing or improving the service provisions.
- bugfix-66 4y ago
  Perhaps it could be argued that Copilot was an unexpected development, and the users of GitHub could not possibly have intended to donate all their work to be used anonymously and without attribution? It's a bit like how non-compete clauses are unenforceable in California. The Copilot theft of intellectual property might be viewed as being too far from anyone's reasonable expectations? We'll see how the legal battle turns out.
- imtringued 4y ago
  That doesn't absolve the users of the generated output(they have to clean room it to be safe), it just means Microsoft can't be sued for using the code you voluntarily uploaded.
- kazinator 4y ago
xenophonf 4y ago
Why not hired a licensed lawyer in your jurisdiction, ideally one with expertise in copyright law, and ask them? If there are licensed lawyers here, they know better than try to give you legal advice (a) for free, (b) anonymously, and (c) without knowing where you are, and anyone else is unqualified to answer your question. You can't just wing this stuff, dude.
- bugfix-66 4y ago
  We're consulting the lawyers here: https://www.saverilawfirm.com/our-cases/github-copilot-intellectual-property-investigation https://www.saverilawfirm.com/our-cases/github-copilot-intel... I'll let you know what they say.
josephcsible 4y ago
That license is neither free nor open source, so you'd be stooping to Microsoft's level by using it. And it wouldn't help anyway, since they're claiming fair use, which if true, means they don't need a license. (And if false, then they're in violation of the existing licenses anyway.)
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Hold on, how can it ever be fair use if this is literally at the foundation of their commercial offering?
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    I'm not saying that it is. I'm saying that whether or not it is, this license won't make a difference.
    - bugfix-66 4y ago
      It's certainly less ambiguous. The BSD license restricts both "redistribution" and "use": Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: Training a Copilot-like system is "use" in obvious violation of clause 3: 3. Use in source or binary forms for the construction or operation of predictive software generation systems is prohibited. What else can we do?
  - tssva 4y ago
    Just because you use something for commercial purposes doesn't mean it can't be fair use. See Google v Oracle.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      Wasn't that about API as opposed to implementation?
      - 4y ago
davidherrero 4y ago
Testing for uni work jeje
lasereyes136 4y ago
What problem is this meant to address? How is this making OSS better?
- azemetre 4y ago
  Probably to stop corporations from profiting from this work, or maybe these trillion dollar companies could pay the people who made these repos if they want to train their models on without expressive permission. Even better, maybe they can pay residuals out every time the model is using their code.
- bugfix-66 4y ago
  Explained here: https://bugfix-66.com/7a82559a13b39c7fa404320c14f47ce0c304facc51cdacbba3f99654652bf428 https://bugfix-66.com/7a82559a13b39c7fa404320c14f47ce0c304fa...
kazinator 4y ago
What you're trying to do is pointless and wrongheaded; putting this license on your software will cause distributions to treat it as radioactive. The conditions of the two-clause BSD license already prohibits the uses that you're trying to ban, because those uses do not "retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer". Suppose that your software were mangled by AI, in a way that conforms to the two-clause BSD license: the copyright notice and all are there. What would be wrong with it? Until you explain what the actual problem is, it's impossible to advise you on licensing. For instance, are you concerned that even if some AI preserves your copyright notices, your name is then being associated with gibberish? People could cause that problem, too; some human could take your two-clause-BSD-licensed program, and make garbage modifications to it which make it look like unprofessional crap, without indicating that the program has been modified. The result carries only your copyright notice, making it look like you wrote it that way. If that possibility makes you uncomfortable, finds some existing license which requires modified works to be clearly indicated as modified.

39 points by bugfix-66 4y ago

gshdiwuehdhwu 4y ago

agpl3 they will have to open source all code and data that produced the derivative work. why reinvent the wheel?

bugfix-66 4y ago
We need a more permissive MIT- or BSD-style license. The GPL is good for some purposes, but too restrictive for others.
- t-3 4y ago
  What is the use-case for a permissive license that does not permit use by code-fragment-compiler AI systems?
  - bugfix-66 4y ago
    I use MIT- and BSD-licensed code at work in a closed-source commercial system. The documentation for our system acknowledges our use of the open-source code, and I'm sure the authors are proud to be part of our codebase (with attribution). That's the use-case.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  Other than the ZFS-on-Linux situation (which is only a problem because the CDDL was intentionally written to cause it), what is the GPL "too restrictive" for? In the ideal world, literally all software would be AGPLv3.
  - Xymist 4y ago
    In the ideal world, literally all software would be CC-0. Copilot is an example of something which should exist, in this form or optimally a much better one. Copyright is an example of something which should not exist, in any form. As with patents, it's fundamentally a drag on innovation and development.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      > In the ideal world, literally all software would be CC-0. No, because then companies would release heavily obfuscated binaries of everything and not provide the source, or worse, require you to run everything in their cloud and never release anything to you.

ronsor 4y ago

These AI systems are all riding on fair use anyway (at least for now), so it doesn't matter what license you choose because they're never accepting it in the first place.

bugfix-66 4y ago
Law-abiding companies like Microsoft won't knowingly violate a license. My understanding is that Microsoft makes an effort to exclude all GPL software from its training. (Is this true?) What we need is a more permissive MIT- or BSD-style license that defeats Copilot. We just need to convince law-abiding companies that they must not use the code.
- ronsor 4y ago
  Where did Microsoft say that GPL code was excluded from the training dataset? Since not including attribution is already a violation of MIT/BSD-style licenses, I don't think MS is discouraged by violating licenses.
  - bugfix-66 4y ago
    Unfortunately, I cannot find support for my claim that Microsoft excludes GPL-licensed code.

dpifke 4y ago

The problem with making up your own license clause is that responsible companies now need to pay their lawyers to review it if they want to use your software. This is going to exclude a lot of users who don't want to pay for that review, rather than just the ones who'd use it for purposes you want to prohibit.

bugfix-66 4y ago
Well, what are our options? What else can we do to protect ourselves from Microsoft Copilot?
- speedgoose 4y ago
  Do we have to protect ourselves? I understand that some may disagree that training AI with copyrighted data is fair use, but protecting? If you are scared that many companies will steal open source code and not give anything back, well, it’s already the case. If you are scared to be replaced by an IA, forbidding the AI doesn’t seem te be the right approach. It’s too late and you should perhaps start to use it and improve it instead of fighting it.
t-3 4y ago
If someone is against CoPilot-style use of their code, would they want commercial organizations using it? It seems like such a hurdle would be quite attractive for many projects.

waste_monk 4y ago

From what I vaguely understand, part of the GitHub terms of service is granting GitHub / Microsoft various rights to store, index, etc. the contents of your repositories. That is, in addition to whatever license you choose to use for your project, you are granting GH/MS additional rights on top of that (if they are not already granted by the project license). While I am not a lawyer / licensing expert, I would be very surprised if the terms of service did not include rights or some other loophole allowing it to be used for training machine learning systems[1]. So the actual license you'd use is probably irrelevant while it's hosted on GitHub. [1] A paragraph from section D4 here https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#d-user-generated-content https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... states: "We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like copy it to our database and make backups; show it to you and other users; parse it into a search index or otherwise analyze it on our servers; share it with other users; and perform it, in case Your Content is something like music or video." I'd guess CoPilot would be covered by either the parsing or improving the service provisions.

bugfix-66 4y ago
Perhaps it could be argued that Copilot was an unexpected development, and the users of GitHub could not possibly have intended to donate all their work to be used anonymously and without attribution? It's a bit like how non-compete clauses are unenforceable in California. The Copilot theft of intellectual property might be viewed as being too far from anyone's reasonable expectations? We'll see how the legal battle turns out.
imtringued 4y ago
That doesn't absolve the users of the generated output(they have to clean room it to be safe), it just means Microsoft can't be sued for using the code you voluntarily uploaded.
kazinator 4y ago

xenophonf 4y ago

Why not hired a licensed lawyer in your jurisdiction, ideally one with expertise in copyright law, and ask them? If there are licensed lawyers here, they know better than try to give you legal advice (a) for free, (b) anonymously, and (c) without knowing where you are, and anyone else is unqualified to answer your question. You can't just wing this stuff, dude.

bugfix-66 4y ago
We're consulting the lawyers here: https://www.saverilawfirm.com/our-cases/github-copilot-intellectual-property-investigation https://www.saverilawfirm.com/our-cases/github-copilot-intel... I'll let you know what they say.

josephcsible 4y ago

That license is neither free nor open source, so you'd be stooping to Microsoft's level by using it. And it wouldn't help anyway, since they're claiming fair use, which if true, means they don't need a license. (And if false, then they're in violation of the existing licenses anyway.)

throwaway290 4y ago
Hold on, how can it ever be fair use if this is literally at the foundation of their commercial offering?
- josephcsible 4y ago
  I'm not saying that it is. I'm saying that whether or not it is, this license won't make a difference.
  - bugfix-66 4y ago
    It's certainly less ambiguous. The BSD license restricts both "redistribution" and "use": Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: Training a Copilot-like system is "use" in obvious violation of clause 3: 3. Use in source or binary forms for the construction or operation of predictive software generation systems is prohibited. What else can we do?
- tssva 4y ago
  Just because you use something for commercial purposes doesn't mean it can't be fair use. See Google v Oracle.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    Wasn't that about API as opposed to implementation?
    - 4y ago

davidherrero 4y ago

Testing for uni work jeje

lasereyes136 4y ago

What problem is this meant to address? How is this making OSS better?

azemetre 4y ago
Probably to stop corporations from profiting from this work, or maybe these trillion dollar companies could pay the people who made these repos if they want to train their models on without expressive permission. Even better, maybe they can pay residuals out every time the model is using their code.
bugfix-66 4y ago
Explained here: https://bugfix-66.com/7a82559a13b39c7fa404320c14f47ce0c304facc51cdacbba3f99654652bf428 https://bugfix-66.com/7a82559a13b39c7fa404320c14f47ce0c304fa...

kazinator 4y ago

What you're trying to do is pointless and wrongheaded; putting this license on your software will cause distributions to treat it as radioactive. The conditions of the two-clause BSD license already prohibits the uses that you're trying to ban, because those uses do not "retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer". Suppose that your software were mangled by AI, in a way that conforms to the two-clause BSD license: the copyright notice and all are there. What would be wrong with it? Until you explain what the actual problem is, it's impossible to advise you on licensing. For instance, are you concerned that even if some AI preserves your copyright notices, your name is then being associated with gibberish? People could cause that problem, too; some human could take your two-clause-BSD-licensed program, and make garbage modifications to it which make it look like unprofessional crap, without indicating that the program has been modified. The result carries only your copyright notice, making it look like you wrote it that way. If that possibility makes you uncomfortable, finds some existing license which requires modified works to be clearly indicated as modified.