5 ms·

It's asymmetrical, you publish something online, immediately it is used by social networks or AIs for profit. Vice versa you get an app, it's not even yours. I

It's asymmetrical, you publish something online, immediately it is used by social networks or AIs for profit. Vice versa you get an app, it's not even yours. I think we should strive to avoid playing this game.. But in the end i feel in this particular case, it’s ops fault. He can avoid using that app there’s a world of alternatives for writing apps and organizing apps.

Braxton1980 11mo ago
These aren't related items so there's no comparison. Let's say you publish a blog post guide on how to set up a MySql cluster and I use that as part of DevOps contract work for a company. Do I owe you money? What if I form an opinion because of a political piece you published then produce my own blog post? AI use of public data to produce new information is exactly what we do as people.
- apples_oranges 11mo ago
  No I mean we're in the same community, and perhaps next thing I do is I answer a related question on Stack Overflow that you or someone else can use. Everyone wins, including you, because by writing you also get to structure your thoughts better and perhaps discover some new way. I mean the degree of use or exchange should matter.
  - Braxton1980 11mo ago
    I don't understand the issue. I gave an example of where I'm using your info for my benefit in a different community. Why does it matter that AI is in the same community, doesn't that actually help my argument because its information is more public?
    - majormajor 11mo ago
      I want to be part of a community of people. And for decades, that's what sharing information online one. A third party coming in and saying "hey, everybody stop talking to each other, just talk to us and we'll intermediate and eventually replace every interaction between you, and charge money for it, and fill it up with advertising and eventual enshittification" is not aligned with my goals there at all.
      - Braxton1980 11mo ago
        That's not happening. No one is forcing us to exclusively provide information to AI AI isn't the sole source of information nor are you forced to use it. The internet is already full of advertising and shit
        swiftcoder 11mo ago
        > AI isn't the sole source of information nor are you forced to use it. I mean, it's now embedded in all our search engines, so it's kind of hard to obtain information without invoking the hallucination-generating machine
        hrimfaxi 11mo ago
        So the problem is with search engines, not the communities they index. Parent said: > A third party coming in and saying "hey, everybody stop talking to each other, just talk to us and we'll intermediate and eventually replace every interaction between you, and charge money for it which doesn't seem to be the case in forums and message boards.
        Braxton1980 11mo ago
        So isn't that the real issue for you? It it wasn't being pushed so heavily would you care as much? It's like pre installed apps or forced browsers, they cause a pushback where the arguments are all monopolistic but the reality is user annoyance.
        swiftcoder 11mo ago
        Yeah, I mean, in the last year every search engine, every browser, every SaaS app I have to use for work... They have all compromised their UX to put a chat bot front-end-centre. And in the majority of cases, that chat bot doesn't seem to enable any new use-cases. It's just bandwagoning...
      - digitalbase 11mo ago
        Nostr is a place where we're trying to make that happen. 3rd parties can still come in and try to offer value. But they can not sit between your interactions as clients are interchangeable
  - lifeline82 11mo ago
    [dead]
  - digitalbase 11mo ago
    The problem is that StackOverflow can rug-pull you (and the community) at any time. Things that come to mind: - adding 'account required' screens so information is harder to access - harvesting/selling that ip without your explicit consent (although you agreed in the TCs)
- monooso 11mo ago
  LLMs don't form an opinion, they simply regurgitate the opinions of others.
  - Braxton1980 11mo ago
    People also do that.
    - monooso 11mo ago
      People may do that, but that's all LLMs can do.
      - rpdillon 11mo ago
        If posed a novel problem, I think they would generate a new opinion.
      - Braxton1980 11mo ago
        Do you mean they simply paste information obtained without citation? Because if you ask for an opinion on a subject it generates new information itself based on the data gathered. It does sometimes quote sources, which are properly noted and attributed, but how is that wrong? People write books (for money) all the time and reference sources. I'm not understanding why you think the LLM is different from a person in how it uses information to produce new work.
    - aziaziazi 11mo ago
      And it's forbidden to do that in certain contexts. Selling a service that regurgitate licensed content is neither legal for humans or machines. German court just reminded OpenAI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886131
      - ferrouswheel 11mo ago
        But people get earworms and sing songs out loud that they don't own rights to.
ferrouswheel 11mo ago
This is one reason open source wins.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
  The irony is that a lot / most / all? of these apps and services are built and run on open source software. (is fully closed source software development even still a thing? is there any popular propriatary programming language / editor / runtime / ecosystem?)
  - comprev 11mo ago
    MS Office perhaps? Word, Excel, etc not including Teams
  - ferrouswheel 11mo ago
    Indeed. However Visual Studio and Xcode are closed source and still popular in some circles. Most people will still be relying on open source libraries while using those platforms though.
  - JuniperMesos 11mo ago
    Non-copyleft free software licenses such as the MIT license explicitly grant anyone the right to use the software for any purpose, including for things the original author doesn't approve of, and including building closed-sources apps and services. This is the point of open-source - the original author contributes their software to the open-source commons and then doesn't track who uses it for what. Recent attempts to create licenses that do impose restrictions on Software Freedom 0 are attempts to do ideological advocacy for various leftist causes by means of software licenses, and are not free. Copyleft free software licenses such as the GPL explicitly grant anyone the right to use the software for any purpose, as long as they also extend this right to their own software. The intent of this license was to infect any novel software built upon GPL-licensed software, forcing it to become free as well; in practice any organization who wants to build a proprietary app or service simply avoids GPL dependencies (or blatantly violates the license terms). Empirically, software companies care more about avoiding being forced to release the source code of their own proprietary software more than they care about using the exclusively-GPL'd software commons as a dependency, and this isn't a problem the license itself can solve.
port11 11mo ago
Can you suggest a middle ground that works? JetBrain's pay-to-upgrade but keep the fallback license? I'm genuinely asking. I'm (finally) making my own app without the VC crap, and my best-case scenario is to sell for a fixed price with no plans to upgrade/upsell later. But the app isn't yours, no, since I'll have to deal with the servers/support/admin/taxes on my end. You're buying a license to use it. Is that not ok?

Braxton1980 11mo ago

These aren't related items so there's no comparison. Let's say you publish a blog post guide on how to set up a MySql cluster and I use that as part of DevOps contract work for a company. Do I owe you money? What if I form an opinion because of a political piece you published then produce my own blog post? AI use of public data to produce new information is exactly what we do as people.

apples_oranges 11mo ago
No I mean we're in the same community, and perhaps next thing I do is I answer a related question on Stack Overflow that you or someone else can use. Everyone wins, including you, because by writing you also get to structure your thoughts better and perhaps discover some new way. I mean the degree of use or exchange should matter.
- Braxton1980 11mo ago
  I don't understand the issue. I gave an example of where I'm using your info for my benefit in a different community. Why does it matter that AI is in the same community, doesn't that actually help my argument because its information is more public?
  - majormajor 11mo ago
    I want to be part of a community of people. And for decades, that's what sharing information online one. A third party coming in and saying "hey, everybody stop talking to each other, just talk to us and we'll intermediate and eventually replace every interaction between you, and charge money for it, and fill it up with advertising and eventual enshittification" is not aligned with my goals there at all.
    - Braxton1980 11mo ago
      That's not happening. No one is forcing us to exclusively provide information to AI AI isn't the sole source of information nor are you forced to use it. The internet is already full of advertising and shit
      - swiftcoder 11mo ago
        > AI isn't the sole source of information nor are you forced to use it. I mean, it's now embedded in all our search engines, so it's kind of hard to obtain information without invoking the hallucination-generating machine
        hrimfaxi 11mo ago
        So the problem is with search engines, not the communities they index. Parent said: > A third party coming in and saying "hey, everybody stop talking to each other, just talk to us and we'll intermediate and eventually replace every interaction between you, and charge money for it which doesn't seem to be the case in forums and message boards.
        Braxton1980 11mo ago
        So isn't that the real issue for you? It it wasn't being pushed so heavily would you care as much? It's like pre installed apps or forced browsers, they cause a pushback where the arguments are all monopolistic but the reality is user annoyance.
        swiftcoder 11mo ago
        Yeah, I mean, in the last year every search engine, every browser, every SaaS app I have to use for work... They have all compromised their UX to put a chat bot front-end-centre. And in the majority of cases, that chat bot doesn't seem to enable any new use-cases. It's just bandwagoning...
    - digitalbase 11mo ago
      Nostr is a place where we're trying to make that happen. 3rd parties can still come in and try to offer value. But they can not sit between your interactions as clients are interchangeable
- lifeline82 11mo ago
  [dead]
- digitalbase 11mo ago
  The problem is that StackOverflow can rug-pull you (and the community) at any time. Things that come to mind: - adding 'account required' screens so information is harder to access - harvesting/selling that ip without your explicit consent (although you agreed in the TCs)
monooso 11mo ago
LLMs don't form an opinion, they simply regurgitate the opinions of others.
- Braxton1980 11mo ago
  People also do that.
  - monooso 11mo ago
    People may do that, but that's all LLMs can do.
    - rpdillon 11mo ago
      If posed a novel problem, I think they would generate a new opinion.
    - Braxton1980 11mo ago
      Do you mean they simply paste information obtained without citation? Because if you ask for an opinion on a subject it generates new information itself based on the data gathered. It does sometimes quote sources, which are properly noted and attributed, but how is that wrong? People write books (for money) all the time and reference sources. I'm not understanding why you think the LLM is different from a person in how it uses information to produce new work.
  - aziaziazi 11mo ago
    And it's forbidden to do that in certain contexts. Selling a service that regurgitate licensed content is neither legal for humans or machines. German court just reminded OpenAI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886131
    - ferrouswheel 11mo ago
      But people get earworms and sing songs out loud that they don't own rights to.

ferrouswheel 11mo ago

This is one reason open source wins.

Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
The irony is that a lot / most / all? of these apps and services are built and run on open source software. (is fully closed source software development even still a thing? is there any popular propriatary programming language / editor / runtime / ecosystem?)
- comprev 11mo ago
  MS Office perhaps? Word, Excel, etc not including Teams
- ferrouswheel 11mo ago
  Indeed. However Visual Studio and Xcode are closed source and still popular in some circles. Most people will still be relying on open source libraries while using those platforms though.
- JuniperMesos 11mo ago
  Non-copyleft free software licenses such as the MIT license explicitly grant anyone the right to use the software for any purpose, including for things the original author doesn't approve of, and including building closed-sources apps and services. This is the point of open-source - the original author contributes their software to the open-source commons and then doesn't track who uses it for what. Recent attempts to create licenses that do impose restrictions on Software Freedom 0 are attempts to do ideological advocacy for various leftist causes by means of software licenses, and are not free. Copyleft free software licenses such as the GPL explicitly grant anyone the right to use the software for any purpose, as long as they also extend this right to their own software. The intent of this license was to infect any novel software built upon GPL-licensed software, forcing it to become free as well; in practice any organization who wants to build a proprietary app or service simply avoids GPL dependencies (or blatantly violates the license terms). Empirically, software companies care more about avoiding being forced to release the source code of their own proprietary software more than they care about using the exclusively-GPL'd software commons as a dependency, and this isn't a problem the license itself can solve.

port11 11mo ago

Can you suggest a middle ground that works? JetBrain's pay-to-upgrade but keep the fallback license? I'm genuinely asking. I'm (finally) making my own app without the VC crap, and my best-case scenario is to sell for a fixed price with no plans to upgrade/upsell later. But the app isn't yours, no, since I'll have to deal with the servers/support/admin/taxes on my end. You're buying a license to use it. Is that not ok?