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Their copyright clause reflects my own quandry about LLM usage: I am responsible for ensuring copyright has not been violated with LLM generated code I publish

Their copyright clause reflects my own quandry about LLM usage: I am responsible for ensuring copyright has not been violated with LLM generated code I publish. However, proving the negative, i.e. the code is not copyrighted is almost impossible. I have experienced this - Claude came up with an almost perfect solution to a tricky problem, ten lines to do what I've seen done in multiple KLOC, and I later found the almost identical solution in copyrighted material.

foxglacier 10mo ago
Copyright is for creative work so if it really is the best way to do it, you should be safe even if the AI copied the idea from somebody else. You can't use copyright to restrict access to useful technology like a patent.
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- willtemperley 10mo ago
  That's very useful feedback. I suspect if the solution is irreducible it's OK, which in this case is close to true (this is for bit-unpacking integers): // bytes are added to the buffer until a value of bitwidth is available for _ in 0..<bitWidth { let byte = try UInt8(parsing: &input) buffer |= UInt64(byte) << bitsInBuffer bitsInBuffer += 8 // Values of bitwidth are right-shifted off the buffer. while bitsInBuffer >= bitWidth && outPos < numValues { let value = Int(buffer & mask) out[outPos + outOffset] = value outPos += 1 buffer >>= bitWidth bitsInBuffer -= bitWidth } }
  - grayhatter 10mo ago
    > That's very useful feedback it's also nonsense, so be careful how you try to apply said feedback
octoberfranklin 10mo ago
> However, proving the negative, i.e. the code is not copyrighted is almost impossible. Nonsense, it's trivially easy if you wrote the code yourself. You hold the copyright. If you had some LLM puke out the code for you, well, then you have no idea. So you can't contribute that puke.
- willtemperley 10mo ago
  Did you read my comment? I was specifically talking about publishing LLM generated code: > I am responsible for ensuring copyright has not been violated with LLM generated code I publish Your comment: > If you had some LLM puke out the code for you, well, then you have no idea. So you can't contribute that puke. That's not true. You can if it's not violating copyright. That "puke" as you put it comes in many flavours.
mierz00 10mo ago
I’m curious have you ever been burnt or seen anyone burnt by copyright infringements in code? Sometimes it’s super obvious because a game company steals code from a previous employer, but I have never seen this play out in entreprise software.
- willtemperley 10mo ago
  Personally I have not experienced it, but I have heard of people scanning for LGPL library usage in iOS apps, then essentially extorting the developers for their source code. I can't find the specific article now, but I am extremely careful to avoid anything GPL or LGPL. It's unlikely to be a problem until an app is highly successful, but once that happens people will grasp at whatever straws they can, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America%2C_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America%2....
  - funflame 10mo ago
    How is that extortion? If you use a library/project with a licence you need to abide by its terms. If you don't want to do that, then either write it yourself or find an alternative. People asking for the source code is not extortion, they're fully within their rights to do so.
    - willtemperley 9mo ago
      I actually found the anecdote I was referring to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44605873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44605873 (see comment by user yalok). """ Just anecdotally, but this aligns with my observations on the trend/growth of successful useful open source projects that go with permissive BSD-like license. ~20 years ago there were way less of those than now. And as a SW developer doing client side/apps as well, using GPL/LGPL is a total pain and basically cost prohibitive, unless I work on my personal small project where I don’t care about having to/risking to open source the rest of the code and getting sued/cloned… Real life example from ~2010 - we ended up including an LGPL library in our mobile app code, and published/upstreamed all the modifications we did to that code (mostly ARM optimizations). Once the app became popular, our competitors came to us demanding the source code of our app - just because iOS didn’t support dynamic libraries (so we had to statically link it), and giving them the object code to relink it wasn’t enough for them (which would satisfy the spirit of LGPL), because they really wanted to see how we hacked around iOS camera input APIs… """ Arguably the competitors didn't have a case as the object code was provided, so I would stand by calling this extortion. Maybe the legal burdens were too high, so the company complied.

foxglacier 10mo ago

Copyright is for creative work so if it really is the best way to do it, you should be safe even if the AI copied the idea from somebody else. You can't use copyright to restrict access to useful technology like a patent.

deleted 10mo ago
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willtemperley 10mo ago
That's very useful feedback. I suspect if the solution is irreducible it's OK, which in this case is close to true (this is for bit-unpacking integers): // bytes are added to the buffer until a value of bitwidth is available for _ in 0..<bitWidth { let byte = try UInt8(parsing: &input) buffer |= UInt64(byte) << bitsInBuffer bitsInBuffer += 8 // Values of bitwidth are right-shifted off the buffer. while bitsInBuffer >= bitWidth && outPos < numValues { let value = Int(buffer & mask) out[outPos + outOffset] = value outPos += 1 buffer >>= bitWidth bitsInBuffer -= bitWidth } }
- grayhatter 10mo ago
  > That's very useful feedback it's also nonsense, so be careful how you try to apply said feedback

octoberfranklin 10mo ago

> However, proving the negative, i.e. the code is not copyrighted is almost impossible. Nonsense, it's trivially easy if you wrote the code yourself. You hold the copyright. If you had some LLM puke out the code for you, well, then you have no idea. So you can't contribute that puke.

willtemperley 10mo ago
Did you read my comment? I was specifically talking about publishing LLM generated code: > I am responsible for ensuring copyright has not been violated with LLM generated code I publish Your comment: > If you had some LLM puke out the code for you, well, then you have no idea. So you can't contribute that puke. That's not true. You can if it's not violating copyright. That "puke" as you put it comes in many flavours.

mierz00 10mo ago

I’m curious have you ever been burnt or seen anyone burnt by copyright infringements in code? Sometimes it’s super obvious because a game company steals code from a previous employer, but I have never seen this play out in entreprise software.

willtemperley 10mo ago
Personally I have not experienced it, but I have heard of people scanning for LGPL library usage in iOS apps, then essentially extorting the developers for their source code. I can't find the specific article now, but I am extremely careful to avoid anything GPL or LGPL. It's unlikely to be a problem until an app is highly successful, but once that happens people will grasp at whatever straws they can, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America%2C_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America%2....
- funflame 10mo ago
  How is that extortion? If you use a library/project with a licence you need to abide by its terms. If you don't want to do that, then either write it yourself or find an alternative. People asking for the source code is not extortion, they're fully within their rights to do so.
  - willtemperley 9mo ago
    I actually found the anecdote I was referring to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44605873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44605873 (see comment by user yalok). """ Just anecdotally, but this aligns with my observations on the trend/growth of successful useful open source projects that go with permissive BSD-like license. ~20 years ago there were way less of those than now. And as a SW developer doing client side/apps as well, using GPL/LGPL is a total pain and basically cost prohibitive, unless I work on my personal small project where I don’t care about having to/risking to open source the rest of the code and getting sued/cloned… Real life example from ~2010 - we ended up including an LGPL library in our mobile app code, and published/upstreamed all the modifications we did to that code (mostly ARM optimizations). Once the app became popular, our competitors came to us demanding the source code of our app - just because iOS didn’t support dynamic libraries (so we had to statically link it), and giving them the object code to relink it wasn’t enough for them (which would satisfy the spirit of LGPL), because they really wanted to see how we hacked around iOS camera input APIs… """ Arguably the competitors didn't have a case as the object code was provided, so I would stand by calling this extortion. Maybe the legal burdens were too high, so the company complied.