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> I like having an LLM for GitHub That LLM was trained on FOSS software that others like myself wrote and did not consent to have used in such a manner. Even
by rectang 3y ago
> I like having an LLM for GitHub
That LLM was trained on FOSS software that others like myself wrote and did not consent to have used in such a manner. Even if you're also a FOSS contributor and you're fine with it, I'm not.
So you like it, but you're not the party whose consent matters. You're the customer consuming the laundered goods from the fence.
- zztop44 3y agoIf you release source code under a FOSS license doesn’t that specifically mean that you explicitly consent to it being used in ways you might not be fine with?
- robertlagrant 3y agoNo, the licence is the thing that defines what they'd be fine with. I don't think it's possible to write a licence that allows you to do things with the software that the licence forbids.
- zztop44 3y agoI think that’s mostly my point. GP release source code, presumably under a license that permitted this use. It’s okay to not be happy that it was used this way… but that’s life
- lvass 3y agoNo license except CC0/unlicense permits laundering authorship like Copilot does.
- rectang 3y agoYes, this is exactly true among the popular FOSS licenses. The attribution licenses such as ALv2, BSD, MIT, etc. which are generally considered to be "permissive" still require attribution, and this condition is not upheld by popular LLMs. Of course, the copied material has to be judged substantial enough for the license to apply in a court of law, which is a human-arbitrated threshold. It will most likely be a copyleft author who eventually brings a court case, but the attribution licenses do not allow for LLM usage either unless the LLM provides attribution and preserves notices as spelled out in the licenses.
- bee_rider 3y agoIt is a new angle of attack that the authors of the code didn’t know was coming. I think it is pretty obvious that lots of GPL authors wouldn’t want their code to be productized in ways that don’t contribute back to the community, because they had the ability to use a BSD or MIT license and didn’t take it.
- moonchrome 3y agoIf you don't want people to learn from your code then don't open source it. Learning via LLM vs person learning is a distinction that sounds unenforceable in practice.
- bee_rider 3y agoThe stealing open source code is generally extremely difficult to prevent in practice; nobody knows by default if you copy-paste some open source code into a closed code base. But this shouldn’t prevent us from calling out bad behavior when we do see it. Legally, of course, LLMs are not people. They don’t have the same rights as people, and it isn’t obvious whether or not they can legally generate new IP. They operate by a complicated but essentially mechanical process, and it is pretty novel to say that such a process could be used to remove copyrights.
- rectang 3y agoThere will eventually be a court case where an LLM reproduces creative code verbatim which clears the de minimis threshold. For example: https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 But the defendant won't be Microsoft — they just provided a tool, and that's legal. No, the defendant will be the downstream consumer who incorporated the code spat out by the LLM. It doesn't matter whether the LLM "learned" — intent is irrelevant and the defendant will have committed copyright violation regardless. The LLM can't copyright-wash the code — nobody can.
- bippihippi1 3y agono, foss means free and open source. you're still able to use a license that dictates how it can be used
- bastardoperator 3y agoOSS people complaining about licenses while simultaneously ignoring the license they granted Github is peak irony. I'm totally fine with it, it's why I do it, I don't need accolades and I'm not straddling a user with legal agreements, that's not freedom in my mind.
- rectang 3y agoGitHub only has the FOSS license because the TOS applies only to the owner of the repo, but contributors to the code in the repo are not required to agree to the TOS. None of the popular FOSS licenses except CC0 grant rights which allow LLM training — they all require attribution at least and the copyleft licenses require reciprocity (when the copied code is substantial enough for the license to apply).
- bastardoperator 3y agoWrong, you cannot commit to github without first agreeing to the TOS. Every user does it. Y'all are gonna get beat up in court and I think it's going to be hilarious.
- rectang 3y ago> Wrong, you cannot commit to github without first agreeing to the TOS. Every user does it. The point is that there are repositories on Github that contain commits from non-Github-users. For example, not every single commit to the Linux kernel has been made by a Github user, but there is a mirror at https://github.com/torvalds/linux https://github.com/torvalds/linux .
- bastardoperator 3y agoAnd when Linus who owns the entirety of the Linux copyright created the mirror, he agreed to the TOS. You're playing a dumb game and what I find odd about license zealots is their inability to respect licences that they're not forcing on others. Have any more prime examples you need debunked?