5 ms·

Copyleft of course is of limited use since the FSF slept through the desktop to Internet service transition and now sleeps through the "AI" transition. GPLv4 s

Copyleft of course is of limited use since the FSF slept through the desktop to Internet service transition and now sleeps through the "AI" transition. GPLv4 should be AGPL+no-AI if it is supposed to have any effect.

zorked 1y ago
It is copyright as a whole that is sleeping through the "AI" transition/robbery.
- netbsdusers 1y ago
  Usually when I hear "robbery" it brings to mind someone stealing your phone or wallet at knife-point. Certainly not training some model on some code that involves neither violence nor depriving anyone of anything. The concept of copyright is the fiction that information - something that can be freely modified, copied, or transmitted - is of the commodity-form, that information should be treated as if it were a single real object that were inherently scarce. It is a fiction that exists to serve of some of the most hateful, mafia-like firms - your Disneys, UMGs, Getty Images, and the like. So if the AI interests are powerful enough to deal that whole rotten system a serious blow, then I'm all for them.
  - xigoi 1y ago
    Server bandwidth is a commodity. If a site gets DDOSed by LLM training, then actual humans won’t be able to access the information.
tobias3 1y ago
Since AI use is based on "fair-use" how can you add a no-AI clause? Only protection I see is to not publish the code.
- Diti 1y ago
  “Fair use” is a notion related to copyright. The authors in Europe who won in cases of free software licensing violations did it on the grounds of breach of contract law.
  - omnimus 1y ago
    Also the whole AI is “fair use” battle is not finished. AI companies like to pretend like it is but big part of “fair use” is that it doesn’t compete with the initial work… it’s hard to make a strong case there.
  - yxhuvud 1y ago
    In either case "Fair use" is a thing very limited to USA and does not apply outside it. There may be similar things in other jurisdictions, but it cannot be assumed the same reasoning and rules apply.
  - tobias3 1y ago
    Right, seems I can prevent AI training by marking a work here in Germany (via UrgH § 44b Abs. 3). That would be perhaps something to add to (a variant of) the GPL. Doesn't prevent training in the US and use of the trained AI and material it produces here, I guess. Then I have to start a civil law-suit and prove that the produced work is similar enough to the the original work. That was the step that failed in the Hellwig (Linux) vs. VMWare lawsuit.
mistercheph 1y ago
GPLv4 should be AGPL+release the source code for your deployment/provisioning infrastructure, there is clear market demand for a freedom preserving license that defends against AWS, how hard could it be to craft something up that would be indigestible to them?
- msgodel 1y ago
  >g to their most recent 10-Q Barbie sales have been flat YoY so I guess they felt like they had to do something. No thanks. Seriously please no, I do not want to see it, that stuff has negative value.
- KronisLV 1y ago
  > ...release the source code for your deployment/provisioning infrastructure... SSPL works a bit similarly: https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/server-side-public-license https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/server-side-public-l... > If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third parties as a service, you must make the Service Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge, under the terms of this License. ... > “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available. Not really a free software license, at least typically not considered one though.
  - sparkie 1y ago
    The SSPL is free in spirit, but it doesn't fit the OSI definition of "Open Source" of the FSF's definition of "Free software" because it places restrictions on purpose of use. IMO we should have more license like this. Who cares whether you've got the approval and branding of some other foundation?
    - 1y ago
jeroenhd 1y ago
So far, lawsuits seem to be heading towards a "AI is not subject to copyright" direction, so a no-AI license doesn't seem practical. As for the internet service industry: AGPL already covers that, I think. However, I'm not sure if AGPL has ever been tested in court (especially outside of the USA). For the EU there's the EUPL v1.2 which should be AGPL compatible. I don't think there's much you can do to stop AI companies from stealing your code unless you go out of your way to make every method name, variable, and string template contain at least one slur or support for terrorism. That way, someone will need to explicitly rewrite the code for it to be spat back out, which is more effort than most AI bros are willing to put in.
- sparkie 1y ago
  A clause in a license which states something like "You may not use this work for training an artificial neural network" should suffice. If the AI developer ignores the term and trains his AI with it anyway, they would clearly be in violation of your licensing terms, and then it would be for a court to decide. Having the term in your license would be preferential than omitting it, since it's hard for a court to rule that they're not in violation of your license when its written there plain as day. If you don't have the clause then you basically have no defence as it can easily be argued that they've followed your licensing terms, which don't prevent its use for such purpose.
  - mr_toad 1y ago
    > A clause in a license which states something like "You may not use this work for training an artificial neural network" should suffice. If you needed a license to train AI then that clause would be redundant. It doesn’t matter what clauses you add to a license if the courts let people train AI without a license.
    - sparkie 1y ago
      You don't need a license to train AI, but that's not the point. The license is applying to using your work - a EULA if you like. If you provide a license which states that it cannot be used for training, then users of your work are required to follow its licensing terms, and not following them is a violation of the licensing terms. If you've made your work available to use, without an explicit clause specifying that it can't be used for training AI, then it is a valid use of your work that doesn't violate its licensing terms. EULAs themselves are a grey area where their clauses are not necessarily enforcible, but it's ultimately for a court to decide, and it would definitely be better to have it as a clause in your license. If the user ticks a box to declare they've read the terms and agree, it's hard for them to argue otherwise in court. A sufficiently advanced LLM should be able to read the term and comprehend that it can't learn from the work and should ignore anything from it. As AI improves it will be more difficult for the providers to argue that term violations were accidental because their AIs would specifically need to be instructed to ignore such clauses - and the developers who provide such instructions would have a much weaker defence in a court.
roenxi 1y ago
It is pretty much impossible to square the FSF's mission or methods with limiting how people use GPLed software in relation to AI. The FSF should be one of the organisations carrying the banner that people are free to use GPL-ed software as they like.

zorked 1y ago

It is copyright as a whole that is sleeping through the "AI" transition/robbery.

netbsdusers 1y ago
Usually when I hear "robbery" it brings to mind someone stealing your phone or wallet at knife-point. Certainly not training some model on some code that involves neither violence nor depriving anyone of anything. The concept of copyright is the fiction that information - something that can be freely modified, copied, or transmitted - is of the commodity-form, that information should be treated as if it were a single real object that were inherently scarce. It is a fiction that exists to serve of some of the most hateful, mafia-like firms - your Disneys, UMGs, Getty Images, and the like. So if the AI interests are powerful enough to deal that whole rotten system a serious blow, then I'm all for them.
- xigoi 1y ago
  Server bandwidth is a commodity. If a site gets DDOSed by LLM training, then actual humans won’t be able to access the information.

tobias3 1y ago

Since AI use is based on "fair-use" how can you add a no-AI clause? Only protection I see is to not publish the code.

Diti 1y ago
“Fair use” is a notion related to copyright. The authors in Europe who won in cases of free software licensing violations did it on the grounds of breach of contract law.
- omnimus 1y ago
  Also the whole AI is “fair use” battle is not finished. AI companies like to pretend like it is but big part of “fair use” is that it doesn’t compete with the initial work… it’s hard to make a strong case there.
- yxhuvud 1y ago
  In either case "Fair use" is a thing very limited to USA and does not apply outside it. There may be similar things in other jurisdictions, but it cannot be assumed the same reasoning and rules apply.
- tobias3 1y ago
  Right, seems I can prevent AI training by marking a work here in Germany (via UrgH § 44b Abs. 3). That would be perhaps something to add to (a variant of) the GPL. Doesn't prevent training in the US and use of the trained AI and material it produces here, I guess. Then I have to start a civil law-suit and prove that the produced work is similar enough to the the original work. That was the step that failed in the Hellwig (Linux) vs. VMWare lawsuit.

mistercheph 1y ago

GPLv4 should be AGPL+release the source code for your deployment/provisioning infrastructure, there is clear market demand for a freedom preserving license that defends against AWS, how hard could it be to craft something up that would be indigestible to them?

msgodel 1y ago
>g to their most recent 10-Q Barbie sales have been flat YoY so I guess they felt like they had to do something. No thanks. Seriously please no, I do not want to see it, that stuff has negative value.
KronisLV 1y ago
> ...release the source code for your deployment/provisioning infrastructure... SSPL works a bit similarly: https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/server-side-public-license https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/server-side-public-l... > If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third parties as a service, you must make the Service Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge, under the terms of this License. ... > “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available. Not really a free software license, at least typically not considered one though.
- sparkie 1y ago
  The SSPL is free in spirit, but it doesn't fit the OSI definition of "Open Source" of the FSF's definition of "Free software" because it places restrictions on purpose of use. IMO we should have more license like this. Who cares whether you've got the approval and branding of some other foundation?
  - 1y ago

jeroenhd 1y ago

So far, lawsuits seem to be heading towards a "AI is not subject to copyright" direction, so a no-AI license doesn't seem practical. As for the internet service industry: AGPL already covers that, I think. However, I'm not sure if AGPL has ever been tested in court (especially outside of the USA). For the EU there's the EUPL v1.2 which should be AGPL compatible. I don't think there's much you can do to stop AI companies from stealing your code unless you go out of your way to make every method name, variable, and string template contain at least one slur or support for terrorism. That way, someone will need to explicitly rewrite the code for it to be spat back out, which is more effort than most AI bros are willing to put in.

sparkie 1y ago
A clause in a license which states something like "You may not use this work for training an artificial neural network" should suffice. If the AI developer ignores the term and trains his AI with it anyway, they would clearly be in violation of your licensing terms, and then it would be for a court to decide. Having the term in your license would be preferential than omitting it, since it's hard for a court to rule that they're not in violation of your license when its written there plain as day. If you don't have the clause then you basically have no defence as it can easily be argued that they've followed your licensing terms, which don't prevent its use for such purpose.
- mr_toad 1y ago
  > A clause in a license which states something like "You may not use this work for training an artificial neural network" should suffice. If you needed a license to train AI then that clause would be redundant. It doesn’t matter what clauses you add to a license if the courts let people train AI without a license.
  - sparkie 1y ago
    You don't need a license to train AI, but that's not the point. The license is applying to using your work - a EULA if you like. If you provide a license which states that it cannot be used for training, then users of your work are required to follow its licensing terms, and not following them is a violation of the licensing terms. If you've made your work available to use, without an explicit clause specifying that it can't be used for training AI, then it is a valid use of your work that doesn't violate its licensing terms. EULAs themselves are a grey area where their clauses are not necessarily enforcible, but it's ultimately for a court to decide, and it would definitely be better to have it as a clause in your license. If the user ticks a box to declare they've read the terms and agree, it's hard for them to argue otherwise in court. A sufficiently advanced LLM should be able to read the term and comprehend that it can't learn from the work and should ignore anything from it. As AI improves it will be more difficult for the providers to argue that term violations were accidental because their AIs would specifically need to be instructed to ignore such clauses - and the developers who provide such instructions would have a much weaker defence in a court.

roenxi 1y ago

It is pretty much impossible to square the FSF's mission or methods with limiting how people use GPLed software in relation to AI. The FSF should be one of the organisations carrying the banner that people are free to use GPL-ed software as they like.