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The solution to this whole situation seems pretty simple to me. LLMs were trained on a giant mix of code, and it's impossible to disentangle it, but a not insig
by scuff3d 7mo ago
The solution to this whole situation seems pretty simple to me. LLMs were trained on a giant mix of code, and it's impossible to disentangle it, but a not insignificant portion of their capabilities comes from GPL licenced code. Therefore, any codebase that uses LLM code is now GPL. You have a proprietary product? Not anymore.
Not saying there's a legal precedent for that right now, but it's the only thing that makes any sense to me. Either that or retain the models on only MIT/similarly licenced code or code you have explicit permission to train on.
- keithnz 7mo agoif you train yourself by looking at GPL code then go implement your own things, is that code GPL?
- AberrantJ 7mo agoOf course not, because everyone making these arguments wants people to have some magic sauce so they get to ignore all the rules placed on the "artificial" thing.
- estimator7292 7mo agoIf you copy and paste one line from a thousand different GPL projects, is the resulting program GPL? Let's be honest about what's happening here.
- scuff3d 7mo agoIt could be. The amount of code you copy doesn't matter, just depends on context and if your work could now be considered derivative. I said this else where, but I work with people who won't even look at GPL code because of the potential legal entanglements. Yes let's. Corporations with billions of dollars behind them whole sale stole copy right work and licenced code to train models, and then turned around and sold the result with no attribution or monetary benefit given to the people they stole from. They knew what they were doing and relied on the legal system being slow enough that they could plant a flag in the market before legal challenges killed them. It's an industry built on theft. By all rights they should have been sued/fined out of existence before it ever got this far. But if you have enough money you can make almost anything legal.
- dec0dedab0de 7mo agoit can be, depending on if it is different enough to convince a jury that it is not a copyright violation. See the lawsuits from Marvin Gaye's family to see how that can be unpredictable.
- rmast 7mo agoI would imagine there must also be some aspect of uniqueness to it as well for even recognizing where a line of code came from… otherwise almost every Python script might have copied this line from a GPL licensed program: `if __name__ == "__main__":` I have no idea where that line first appeared, so figuring out what license it was originally written under would be difficult to track down, and most software only has license info at the file rather than line level.
- scuff3d 7mo agoI work with people who literally won't even look at GPL code, because of the risk. So yes, potentially.
- nkmnz 7mo agoWhat about the code that wasn't even GPL, but "all rights reserved", i.e., without any license? That's even stronger than GPL and based on your reasoning, this would mean that any code created by an LLM is not licensed to be used for anything.
- moralestapia 7mo agoYes.
- scuff3d 7mo agoOkay. That's fine with me. I was trying to be generous and assume the GPL would be the strongest.
- duskdozer 7mo agoThat would make sense, yes.
- PaulDavisThe1st 7mo agoCode created by an LLM cannot, in the USA, be copyrighted. No copyright, no license.
- nkmnz 7mo agoYou get it wrong. Copyright is excluding you from using something, a license is allowing you to use something. So „no license“ does NOT mean „free to use“, but „not allowed to use“.
- PaulDavisThe1st 7mo agoIf you do not hold copyright, you cannot prevent someone from copying a thing. If you cannot prevent someone from copying the thing, then "licensing" it is somewhere between pretty weird and pretty stupid, no?
- nkmnz 7mo ago
- moralestapia 7mo ago100% agree, if we are fair and honorable. In practice, well ... you saw what's been going on with the Epstein files, etc... we are far from being ourselves in a world that's fair and honorable. (I'm not condoning it, I think it's massively trashy to steal code like this then pretend you're the good guy because of some super weird mental gymnastics you're doing)
- scuff3d 7mo agoCompletely agree. This isn't practical. It's never going to happen just because of the sheer amount of capital behind LLM companies. You can do anything rotten, as long as you throw enough money at it.
- PaulDavisThe1st 7mo agoUS courts have already ruled that in the USA, no machine-generated code can be copyrighted. No copyright, no license, of any type.