4 ms·

Regardless of the legal interpretations, I think it's very worrying if an automated AI rewrite of GPLed code (or any code for that matter) could somehow be use

Regardless of the legal interpretations, I think it's very worrying if an automated AI rewrite of GPLed code (or any code for that matter) could somehow be used to circumvent the original license. That kinda takes out the one stick the open source community has to force soulless multinationals to contribute back to the open source projects they use.

rao-v 8mo ago
I’m genuinely surprised to see this not discussed more by the FOSS community. There are so many ways to blow past the GPL now: 1. File by file rewrite by AI (“change functions and vars a bit”) 2. One LLM writes a diff language (or pseudo code) version of each function that a diff LLM translates back into code and tests for input/output parity The real danger is that this becomes increasingly undetectable in closed source code and can continue to sync with progress in the GPLed repo. I don’t think any current license has a plausible defense against this sort of attack.
- wakawaka28 8mo ago
  #1 is already possible and always has been. I never heard of a case of anyone actually trying it. #2 is too nitpicky and unnecessarily costly for LLMs. It would be better to just ask it to generate a spec and tests based on the original, them create a separate implementation based on that. A person can do that today free and clear. If LLMs will be able to do this, we will just need to cope. Perhaps the future is in validating software instead of writing it.
- nmfisher 8mo ago
  I’ve never delved fully into IP law, but wouldn’t these be considered derivative works? They’re basically just reimplementing exactly the same functionality with slightly different names? This would be different from the “API reimplementation” (see Google vs Oracle) because in that case, they’re not reusing implementation details, just the external contract.
  - pas 8mo ago
    there's usually a test for originality, and it involves asking things (from the jury) like, is it transformative enough? so if someone tells the LLM to write it in WASM and also make it much faster and use it in a different commercial sector... then maybe since 2023 the standard is much higher (arguably it was placed too low in 1993)
  - rerdavies 8mo ago
    Because copyrights do not protect ideas. Thankfully. We are free to express ideas, as long as we do so in our own words. How that principle is applied in actual law, and how that principle is a applied to software is ridiculously complicated. But that is the heart of the principle at play here. The law draws a line between ideas (which cannot be copyrighted), and particular expressions of those ideas (e.g. the original source code), which are protected. However, it is an almost fractally complicated line which, in many place, relies on concepts of "fairness", and, because our legal system uses a system of legal precedence, depends on interpretation of a huge body of prior legal decisions. Not being a trained lawyer, or a Supreme Court justice, I cannot express a sensible position as to which side of the line this particular case falls. There are, however, enormously important legal precedents that pretty much all professional software developers use to guide their behaviour with respect to handling of copyrighted material (IBM vs. Ahmdall, and Google v. Oracle, particularly) that seem to suggest to us non-lawyers that this sort of reimplementation is legal. (Seek the advice of a real lawyer if it matters).
    - rao-v 7mo ago
      Taking a step back, it seems fairly clear that wherever you set the bar, it should be possible to automate a system that reads code, generates some sort of intermediate representation at the acceptable level of abstraction and then regenerates code that passes an extensive set of integration tests … every day. At that point our current understanding of open source protections … fails?
      - rerdavies 7mo ago
        Depends whether you sit on the MIT half of open source, or the GPL side of open source, I suppose.
- singpolyma3 8mo ago
  "change functions and bars a bit" isn't a rewrite. Anything where the LLM had access to the original code isn't a rewrite. This would just be a derivative work. However most of the industry willfully violates the GPL without even trying such tricks anyway so there are certainly issues
  - UqWBcuFx6NV4r 8mo ago
    The fact that you are drawing such absolute conclusions is indication enough that you are not qualified to speak on this.
- wlonkly 8mo ago
  (1) sounds like a derivative work, but (2) is an interesting AI-simulacrum of a clean room implementation IF the first LLM writes a specification and not a translation.
CamperBob2 8mo ago
That kinda takes out the one stick the open source community has to force soulless multinationals to contribute back to the open source projects they use. I'll trade that stick for what GenAI can do for me, in a heartbeat. The question, of course, is how this attitude -- even if perfectly rational at the moment -- will scale into the future. My guess is that pretty much all the original code that will ever need to be written has already been written, and will just need to be refactored, reshaped, and repurposed going forward. A robot's job, in other words. But that could turn out to be a mistaken guess.
- beepbooptheory 8mo ago
  I think it's very weird but valid I guess to want to be just atomic individual in constant LLM feedback loop. But, at risk of sounding too trite and wholesome here, what about caring for others, the world at large? If you wanna get your thing to rewrite curl or something, that's again really weird but fine, but just don't share it or try to make money off of it. Isn't that like even the rational position here if you still wanna have good training materials for future models? These need not be conflicting interests! We can all be in this together, even if you wanna totally fork yourself into your own LLM output world. What happened to sticking up for the underdogs? For the goodness of well-made software in itself, for itself? Isn't that what gave you all the stuff you have now? Don't you feel at least a little grateful, if maybe not obliged? Maybe we can start there?
  - CamperBob2 8mo ago
    Everything I have now arose from processes of continuous improvement, carried out by smart people taking full advantage of the best available tools and technologies including all available means of automation. It'll be OK.
    - beepbooptheory 8mo ago
      Ah well, I tried.. To paraphrase Nietzsche, a man can be measured by how well he sleeps at night. I can only hope you stay well rested into this future ;). And yes, it will be ok!
therealpygon 8mo ago
Take AI out…if a person can do it, which they can, the situation hasn’t changed. Further, it was a person who did it, with the assistance of AI. Also, the concept that you “can’t be exposed to the code before writing a compatible alternative” is utterly false in their arguments. In fact, one could take every single interface definition they have defined to communicate and use those interfaces directly to write their own, because in fact this i(programmatic) interface code is not covered by copyright (with an implicit fair use exemption due to the face the software cannot operate without activating said interfaces). The Java lawsuit set that as precedent with JDK. A person could have absolutely rewritten this software using the interfaces and their knowledge, which is perfectly legal if they don’t literally copy and re-word code. Now, if it IS simply re-worded copies of the same code and otherwise the entire project structure is basically the same, it’s a different story. That doesn’t sound like what happened. Finally, how exactly do people think corporations rewrite portions of code that were contributed before re-licensing under a private license? It is ABSOLUTELY possible to rewrite code and relicense it. Edit: Further, so these people think you contribute to a project, that project is beholden to your contribution permanently and it can never be excised? That seems like it would blatantly violate their original persons rights to exercise their own control of the code without those contributions, which is exactly the purpose of a rewrite.
- rmast 8mo ago
  As part of the relicensing ZeroMQ did a few years ago, they sought permission from all previous contributors (yes, it was a multi-year effort). Code contributions that they weren’t able to get permission to relicense resulting in the corresponding lines being removed (or functionality rewritten from scratch).
wareya 8mo ago
It's worrying, but it's consistent with how copyright law is currently written. Laws haven't caught up with what technology is currently capable of yet. The discussion should be whether, and if so how, our laws should be tweaked to stop this from getting out of hand, IMO.
wakawaka28 8mo ago
Soulless multinationals often want to share costs with other soulless multinationals, just like individuals do. So I think there will always be publicly shared code. The real question is whether this code will be worth much if it can be implemented so quickly by a machine.
- judahmeek 8mo ago
  Implementation is only one of the costs shared through open-source projects. There are others, such as security vulnerability detection, support, & general maintenance.
singpolyma3 8mo ago
If it actually is a rewrite it's not "circumventing" it's just a new thing
ottah 8mo ago
It cuts both ways. You can write a GPL version of a proprietary or permissively licensed program. The only difference is the effort of the rewrite is (theoretically) easier. (I have my doubts the rewrite is a reasonably defect free replacement)
luma 8mo ago
If automated AI rewrites are generally feasible, then the marginal price of nearly all software trends to zero.
- robinsonb5 8mo ago
  If code becomes essentially free (ignoring for a moment the environmental cost or the long term cost of allowing code generation to be tollboothed by AI megacorps) the value of code must lie in its track record. The 5-day-old code in chardet has little to no value. The battle-tested years-old code that was casually flushed away to make room for it had value.
TophWells 8mo ago
True, but if that is found to be how it works then an automated AI rewrite of closed-source code is just as unbound by the original license. Which is a much bigger win for the open-source community, since any closed-source software can become the inspiration for an open-source project.
TruePath 8mo ago
If the AI is good enough to truly implement the whole thing to a similar level of reliability without copying it then who cares. At that point you should be able to decompile any program you want and find enough information inside that an AI can go write a similar quality program from the vague information about the call graph. We've transcended copyright in computer code. If it can't and it costs a bunch of money to clean it up then same as always. OTOH if what is actually happening is just that it is rewording the existing code so it looks different then it is still going to run afoul of copyright. You can't just rewrite harry potter with different words. Note that even with Google vs oracle it was important they didn't need the actual code just the headers to get the function calls were enough. Yes it's true that the clean room isn't required but when you have an AI and you can show that it can't do it a second time without looking at the source (not just function declarations) that's pretty strong evidence.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
ineedasername 8mo ago
It’s less worry to me given that a year ago this would have been exceptionally harder to do, requiring a lot more time and effort and been more costly. A year from now it will be even easier. All of this means that one aspect of the mission that brought about the need for a license like this is now fundamentally easier whether or not the license is used. There can be less worry about software locked up in closed source overall.

rao-v 8mo ago

I’m genuinely surprised to see this not discussed more by the FOSS community. There are so many ways to blow past the GPL now: 1. File by file rewrite by AI (“change functions and vars a bit”) 2. One LLM writes a diff language (or pseudo code) version of each function that a diff LLM translates back into code and tests for input/output parity The real danger is that this becomes increasingly undetectable in closed source code and can continue to sync with progress in the GPLed repo. I don’t think any current license has a plausible defense against this sort of attack.

wakawaka28 8mo ago
#1 is already possible and always has been. I never heard of a case of anyone actually trying it. #2 is too nitpicky and unnecessarily costly for LLMs. It would be better to just ask it to generate a spec and tests based on the original, them create a separate implementation based on that. A person can do that today free and clear. If LLMs will be able to do this, we will just need to cope. Perhaps the future is in validating software instead of writing it.
nmfisher 8mo ago
I’ve never delved fully into IP law, but wouldn’t these be considered derivative works? They’re basically just reimplementing exactly the same functionality with slightly different names? This would be different from the “API reimplementation” (see Google vs Oracle) because in that case, they’re not reusing implementation details, just the external contract.
- pas 8mo ago
  there's usually a test for originality, and it involves asking things (from the jury) like, is it transformative enough? so if someone tells the LLM to write it in WASM and also make it much faster and use it in a different commercial sector... then maybe since 2023 the standard is much higher (arguably it was placed too low in 1993)
- rerdavies 8mo ago
  Because copyrights do not protect ideas. Thankfully. We are free to express ideas, as long as we do so in our own words. How that principle is applied in actual law, and how that principle is a applied to software is ridiculously complicated. But that is the heart of the principle at play here. The law draws a line between ideas (which cannot be copyrighted), and particular expressions of those ideas (e.g. the original source code), which are protected. However, it is an almost fractally complicated line which, in many place, relies on concepts of "fairness", and, because our legal system uses a system of legal precedence, depends on interpretation of a huge body of prior legal decisions. Not being a trained lawyer, or a Supreme Court justice, I cannot express a sensible position as to which side of the line this particular case falls. There are, however, enormously important legal precedents that pretty much all professional software developers use to guide their behaviour with respect to handling of copyrighted material (IBM vs. Ahmdall, and Google v. Oracle, particularly) that seem to suggest to us non-lawyers that this sort of reimplementation is legal. (Seek the advice of a real lawyer if it matters).
  - rao-v 7mo ago
    Taking a step back, it seems fairly clear that wherever you set the bar, it should be possible to automate a system that reads code, generates some sort of intermediate representation at the acceptable level of abstraction and then regenerates code that passes an extensive set of integration tests … every day. At that point our current understanding of open source protections … fails?
    - rerdavies 7mo ago
      Depends whether you sit on the MIT half of open source, or the GPL side of open source, I suppose.
singpolyma3 8mo ago
"change functions and bars a bit" isn't a rewrite. Anything where the LLM had access to the original code isn't a rewrite. This would just be a derivative work. However most of the industry willfully violates the GPL without even trying such tricks anyway so there are certainly issues
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 8mo ago
  The fact that you are drawing such absolute conclusions is indication enough that you are not qualified to speak on this.
wlonkly 8mo ago
(1) sounds like a derivative work, but (2) is an interesting AI-simulacrum of a clean room implementation IF the first LLM writes a specification and not a translation.

CamperBob2 8mo ago

That kinda takes out the one stick the open source community has to force soulless multinationals to contribute back to the open source projects they use. I'll trade that stick for what GenAI can do for me, in a heartbeat. The question, of course, is how this attitude -- even if perfectly rational at the moment -- will scale into the future. My guess is that pretty much all the original code that will ever need to be written has already been written, and will just need to be refactored, reshaped, and repurposed going forward. A robot's job, in other words. But that could turn out to be a mistaken guess.

beepbooptheory 8mo ago
I think it's very weird but valid I guess to want to be just atomic individual in constant LLM feedback loop. But, at risk of sounding too trite and wholesome here, what about caring for others, the world at large? If you wanna get your thing to rewrite curl or something, that's again really weird but fine, but just don't share it or try to make money off of it. Isn't that like even the rational position here if you still wanna have good training materials for future models? These need not be conflicting interests! We can all be in this together, even if you wanna totally fork yourself into your own LLM output world. What happened to sticking up for the underdogs? For the goodness of well-made software in itself, for itself? Isn't that what gave you all the stuff you have now? Don't you feel at least a little grateful, if maybe not obliged? Maybe we can start there?
- CamperBob2 8mo ago
  Everything I have now arose from processes of continuous improvement, carried out by smart people taking full advantage of the best available tools and technologies including all available means of automation. It'll be OK.
  - beepbooptheory 8mo ago
    Ah well, I tried.. To paraphrase Nietzsche, a man can be measured by how well he sleeps at night. I can only hope you stay well rested into this future ;). And yes, it will be ok!

therealpygon 8mo ago

Take AI out…if a person can do it, which they can, the situation hasn’t changed. Further, it was a person who did it, with the assistance of AI. Also, the concept that you “can’t be exposed to the code before writing a compatible alternative” is utterly false in their arguments. In fact, one could take every single interface definition they have defined to communicate and use those interfaces directly to write their own, because in fact this i(programmatic) interface code is not covered by copyright (with an implicit fair use exemption due to the face the software cannot operate without activating said interfaces). The Java lawsuit set that as precedent with JDK. A person could have absolutely rewritten this software using the interfaces and their knowledge, which is perfectly legal if they don’t literally copy and re-word code. Now, if it IS simply re-worded copies of the same code and otherwise the entire project structure is basically the same, it’s a different story. That doesn’t sound like what happened. Finally, how exactly do people think corporations rewrite portions of code that were contributed before re-licensing under a private license? It is ABSOLUTELY possible to rewrite code and relicense it. Edit: Further, so these people think you contribute to a project, that project is beholden to your contribution permanently and it can never be excised? That seems like it would blatantly violate their original persons rights to exercise their own control of the code without those contributions, which is exactly the purpose of a rewrite.

rmast 8mo ago
As part of the relicensing ZeroMQ did a few years ago, they sought permission from all previous contributors (yes, it was a multi-year effort). Code contributions that they weren’t able to get permission to relicense resulting in the corresponding lines being removed (or functionality rewritten from scratch).

wareya 8mo ago

It's worrying, but it's consistent with how copyright law is currently written. Laws haven't caught up with what technology is currently capable of yet. The discussion should be whether, and if so how, our laws should be tweaked to stop this from getting out of hand, IMO.

wakawaka28 8mo ago

Soulless multinationals often want to share costs with other soulless multinationals, just like individuals do. So I think there will always be publicly shared code. The real question is whether this code will be worth much if it can be implemented so quickly by a machine.

judahmeek 8mo ago
Implementation is only one of the costs shared through open-source projects. There are others, such as security vulnerability detection, support, & general maintenance.

singpolyma3 8mo ago

If it actually is a rewrite it's not "circumventing" it's just a new thing

ottah 8mo ago

It cuts both ways. You can write a GPL version of a proprietary or permissively licensed program. The only difference is the effort of the rewrite is (theoretically) easier. (I have my doubts the rewrite is a reasonably defect free replacement)

luma 8mo ago

If automated AI rewrites are generally feasible, then the marginal price of nearly all software trends to zero.

robinsonb5 8mo ago
If code becomes essentially free (ignoring for a moment the environmental cost or the long term cost of allowing code generation to be tollboothed by AI megacorps) the value of code must lie in its track record. The 5-day-old code in chardet has little to no value. The battle-tested years-old code that was casually flushed away to make room for it had value.

TophWells 8mo ago

True, but if that is found to be how it works then an automated AI rewrite of closed-source code is just as unbound by the original license. Which is a much bigger win for the open-source community, since any closed-source software can become the inspiration for an open-source project.

TruePath 8mo ago

If the AI is good enough to truly implement the whole thing to a similar level of reliability without copying it then who cares. At that point you should be able to decompile any program you want and find enough information inside that an AI can go write a similar quality program from the vague information about the call graph. We've transcended copyright in computer code. If it can't and it costs a bunch of money to clean it up then same as always. OTOH if what is actually happening is just that it is rewording the existing code so it looks different then it is still going to run afoul of copyright. You can't just rewrite harry potter with different words. Note that even with Google vs oracle it was important they didn't need the actual code just the headers to get the function calls were enough. Yes it's true that the clean room isn't required but when you have an AI and you can show that it can't do it a second time without looking at the source (not just function declarations) that's pretty strong evidence.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

ineedasername 8mo ago

It’s less worry to me given that a year ago this would have been exceptionally harder to do, requiring a lot more time and effort and been more costly. A year from now it will be even easier. All of this means that one aspect of the mission that brought about the need for a license like this is now fundamentally easier whether or not the license is used. There can be less worry about software locked up in closed source overall.