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"in accordance with its license" is the key part that's missing with LLMs. The licenses are completely ignored.
by sumeno 7mo ago
"in accordance with its license" is the key part that's missing with LLMs. The licenses are completely ignored.
- dartharva 7mo ago> The licenses are completely ignored. Where and when? In cases where LLM coding assistants reproduce copyleft code in someone's work assignment? The responsibility in those would be on the user, not on AI.
- pseudalopex 7mo agoThe user would know how?
- sumeno 7mo agoAre you doing a full search of every GPL licensed repository every time you use an LLM to ensure that it isn't giving you GPL licensed code? That doesn't seem reasonable
- dartharva 7mo agoWhy not? Up until a year or two ago LLM pair programmers weren't even a thing.
- bayindirh 7mo agoThis is what GitHub promised years ago. Showing repositories where similar code is present so you can guess the license and use appropriate outputs. I’m not sure whether this is implemented or not since I don’t use generative AI for coding.
- patagurbon 7mo agoIn reproducing code that requires the license be reproduced alongside it.
- nickff 7mo agoIt seems to be a common view on HN that licenses and conditional access to websites should be ignored (i.e. WRT ad-blockers), but also that licenses on Open-Source Software repositories should be respected (i.e. WRT LLM training). I believe that holding these contradictory views is common, but the conflict would need to be resolved to come to a conclusion on how to proceed with LLM training.
- pseudalopex 7mo agoThere is no contradiction. Open source software licenses allow use without conditions. Ad blocker use does not distribute the modified web pages.
- nickff 7mo agoI have not seen any evidence that LLMs ‘distribute’ modified software, though they do seem capable of replicating it.
- lavela 7mo agoI fail to see how mass scale reproduction of copyrighted code isn't a form of distribution.
- nickff 7mo agoReplication is not the same as reproduction; I can replicate an API without violating someone's license or copyright (which I would by reproducing their work).
- pseudalopex 7mo agoReproduce is a definition of replicate. And LLMs reproduced code.
- pseudalopex 7mo agoThe view LLMs should respect open source software licenses is not for replication alone. Models and generated code are derived from training data.
- joquarky 7mo agoThat's because licenses are an abstract complexity tacked on to a simple material reality in order "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts". Just like many cultural rules, they keep growing in complexity until they reach a phase change where they become ignored because they have become too complicated.
- wk_end 7mo agoOSS licenses haven't grown in complexity all that much in the past forty or so years. They're being ignored more now because it's become easier to ignore them, not because it's become harder to abide by them.