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I see in the commits that the license was changed from MIT to their own custom one: https://github.com/Stability-AI/StableCascade/commit/209a52600f35dfe2a205dae

I see in the commits that the license was changed from MIT to their own custom one: https://github.com/Stability-AI/StableCascade/commit/209a52600f35dfe2a205daef54c0ff4068e86bc7 https://github.com/Stability-AI/StableCascade/commit/209a526... Is it legal to use an older snapshot before the license was changed in accordance with the previous MIT license?

OJFord 3y ago
Yes, you can continue to do what you want with that commit^ in accordance with the MIT licence it was released under. Kind of like if you buy an ebook, and then they publish a second edition but only as a hardback - the first edition ebook is still yours to read.
treesciencebot 3y ago
I think the model architecture (training code etc.) itself is still under MIT while the weights (which was the result of training in a huge GPU cluster as well as the dataset they have used [not sure if they publicly talked about it] is under this new license.
- emadm 3y ago
  Code is MIT, weights are under the NC license for now.
ed 3y ago
It seems pretty clear the intent was to use a non-commercial license, so it’s probably something that would go to court, if you really wanted to press the issue. Generally courts are more holistic and look at intent, and understand that clerical errors happen. One exception to this is if a business claims it relied on the previous license and invested a bunch of resources as a result. I believe the timing of commits is pretty important— it would be hard to claim your business made a substantial investment on a pre-announcement repo that was only MIT’ed for a few hours.
- RIMR 3y ago
  If I clone/fork that repo before the license change, and start putting any amount of time into developing my own fork in good faith, they shouldn't be allowed to claim a clerical error when they lied to me upon delivery about what I was allowed to do with the code. Licenses are important. If you are going to expose your code to the world, make sure it has the right license. If you publish your code with the wrong license, you shouldn't be allowed to take it back. Not for an organization of this size that is going to see a new repo cloned thousands of times upon release.
  - ed 3y ago
    There’s no case law here, so if you’re volunteering to find out what a judge thinks we’d surely appreciate it!
  - wokwokwok 3y ago
    No, sadly this won’t fly in court. For the same reason you cannot publish a private corporate repo with an MIT license and then have other people claim in “good faith” to be using it. All they need is to assert that the license was published in error, or that the person publishing it did not have the authority to publish it. You can’t “magically” make a license stick by putting it in a repo, any more than putting a “name here” sticker on someone’s car and then claiming to own it. The license file in the repo is simply the notice of the license. It does not indicate a binding legal agreement. You of course, can challenge it in court, and ianal, but I assure you, there is president in incorrectly labelled repos removing and changing their licenses.
    - RIMR 3y ago
      >All they need is to assert that the license was published in error, or that the person publishing it did not have the authority to publish it. Show me where they did this. All they have is a commit that says "Update License". An update doesn't imply a correction.
    - arcbyte 3y ago
      It could very well fly. Agency law, promissory estoppel, ...
RIMR 3y ago
MIT license is not parasitic like GPL. You can close an MIT licensed codebase, but you cannot retroactively change the license of the old code. Stability's initial commit had an MIT license, so you can fork that commit and do whatever you want with it. It's MIT licensed. Now, the tricky part here is that they committed a change to the license that changes it from MIT to proprietary, but they didn't change any code with it. That is definitely invalid, because they cannot license the exact same codebase with two different contradictory licenses. They can only license the changes made to the codebase after the license change. I wouldn't call it "illegal", but it wouldn't stand up in court if they tried to claim that the software is proprietary, because they already distributed it verbatim with an open license.
- kruuuder 3y ago
  > they didn't change any code with it. That is definitely invalid, because they cannot license the exact same codebase with two different contradictory licenses. Why couldn't they? Of course they can. If you are the copyright owner, you can publish/sell your stuff under as many licenses as you like.
weebull 3y ago
The code is MIT. The model has a non-commercial license. They are separate pieces of work under different licenses. Stability AI have said that the non-commercial license is because this is a technology preview (like SDXL 0.9 was).
deleted 3y ago
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OJFord 3y ago

Yes, you can continue to do what you want with that commit^ in accordance with the MIT licence it was released under. Kind of like if you buy an ebook, and then they publish a second edition but only as a hardback - the first edition ebook is still yours to read.

treesciencebot 3y ago

I think the model architecture (training code etc.) itself is still under MIT while the weights (which was the result of training in a huge GPU cluster as well as the dataset they have used [not sure if they publicly talked about it] is under this new license.

emadm 3y ago
Code is MIT, weights are under the NC license for now.

ed 3y ago

It seems pretty clear the intent was to use a non-commercial license, so it’s probably something that would go to court, if you really wanted to press the issue. Generally courts are more holistic and look at intent, and understand that clerical errors happen. One exception to this is if a business claims it relied on the previous license and invested a bunch of resources as a result. I believe the timing of commits is pretty important— it would be hard to claim your business made a substantial investment on a pre-announcement repo that was only MIT’ed for a few hours.

RIMR 3y ago
If I clone/fork that repo before the license change, and start putting any amount of time into developing my own fork in good faith, they shouldn't be allowed to claim a clerical error when they lied to me upon delivery about what I was allowed to do with the code. Licenses are important. If you are going to expose your code to the world, make sure it has the right license. If you publish your code with the wrong license, you shouldn't be allowed to take it back. Not for an organization of this size that is going to see a new repo cloned thousands of times upon release.
- ed 3y ago
  There’s no case law here, so if you’re volunteering to find out what a judge thinks we’d surely appreciate it!
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  No, sadly this won’t fly in court. For the same reason you cannot publish a private corporate repo with an MIT license and then have other people claim in “good faith” to be using it. All they need is to assert that the license was published in error, or that the person publishing it did not have the authority to publish it. You can’t “magically” make a license stick by putting it in a repo, any more than putting a “name here” sticker on someone’s car and then claiming to own it. The license file in the repo is simply the notice of the license. It does not indicate a binding legal agreement. You of course, can challenge it in court, and ianal, but I assure you, there is president in incorrectly labelled repos removing and changing their licenses.
  - RIMR 3y ago
    >All they need is to assert that the license was published in error, or that the person publishing it did not have the authority to publish it. Show me where they did this. All they have is a commit that says "Update License". An update doesn't imply a correction.
  - arcbyte 3y ago
    It could very well fly. Agency law, promissory estoppel, ...

RIMR 3y ago

MIT license is not parasitic like GPL. You can close an MIT licensed codebase, but you cannot retroactively change the license of the old code. Stability's initial commit had an MIT license, so you can fork that commit and do whatever you want with it. It's MIT licensed. Now, the tricky part here is that they committed a change to the license that changes it from MIT to proprietary, but they didn't change any code with it. That is definitely invalid, because they cannot license the exact same codebase with two different contradictory licenses. They can only license the changes made to the codebase after the license change. I wouldn't call it "illegal", but it wouldn't stand up in court if they tried to claim that the software is proprietary, because they already distributed it verbatim with an open license.

kruuuder 3y ago
> they didn't change any code with it. That is definitely invalid, because they cannot license the exact same codebase with two different contradictory licenses. Why couldn't they? Of course they can. If you are the copyright owner, you can publish/sell your stuff under as many licenses as you like.

weebull 3y ago

The code is MIT. The model has a non-commercial license. They are separate pieces of work under different licenses. Stability AI have said that the non-commercial license is because this is a technology preview (like SDXL 0.9 was).

deleted 3y ago

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