6 ms·

It's not any different from the launch of the FSF. There's a simple solution. If you don't want your lunch eaten by a private equity firm, make sure whatever to

It's not any different from the launch of the FSF. There's a simple solution. If you don't want your lunch eaten by a private equity firm, make sure whatever tool you use is GPL licensed.

palmotea 7mo ago
> If you don't want your lunch eaten by a private equity firm, make sure whatever tool you use is GPL licensed. 1. For the record: the GPL is entirely dependent on copyright. 2. If AI "clean-room" re-implementations are allow to bypass copyright/licenses, the GPL won't protect you.
- islandfox100 7mo ago
  Maybe I'm reading wrong here, but what's the implication of the clean room re-implementations? Someone else is cloning with a changed license, but if I'm still on the GPL licensed tool, how am I "not protected"?
  - eru 7mo ago
    There's basically no different between GPL and BSD in that case.
  - darkwater 7mo ago
    1. Company A develops Project One as GPLv3 2. BigCo bus Company A 3a. usually here BigCo should continue to develop Project One as GPLv3, or stop working on it and the community would fork and it and continue working on it as GPLv3 3b. BigCo does a "clean-room" reimplementation of Project One and releases it under proprietary licence. Community can still fork the older version and work on it, but BigCo can continue to develop and sell their "original" version.
    - makapuf 7mo ago
      2. BigCo owns ProjectOne now 3a. Bigco is now free to release version N+1 as closed source only. 3b. Community can still fork the older version and work on it, but BigCo can continue to develop and sell their original version.
    - bloppe 7mo ago
      As a real world example, Redis was both Company A and BigCo. Project One is now ValKey.
- goku12 7mo ago
  > If AI "clean-room" re-implementations are allow to bypass copyright/licenses, the GPL won't protect you. Isn't that the same for the obligations under BSD/MIT/Apache? The problem they're trying to address is a different one from the problem of AI copyright washing. It's fair to avoid introducing additional problems while debunking another point.
- worldsayshi 7mo ago
  If clean-room re-implementations are allowed to bypass copyright/licenses (software) copyright is dead in general?
  - justcool393 7mo ago
    well no, (clean room )reimplementations of APIs have done since time immemorial. copyright applies to the work itself. if you implement the functionality of X, software copyright protects both! patents protect ideas, copyright protects artistic expressions of ideas
    - LtWorf 7mo ago
      The problem is that, is it clean room if you read all of the code in advance?
- shimman 7mo ago
  "Clean room" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Having the entire corpus of knowledge for humanity and how LLMs work, how can you honestly argue in court that this is purely clean room implementation? This is right up there with Meta lawyers claiming that when they torrent it's totally legal but when a single person torrents it's copyright infringement.
  - 20k 7mo ago
    Far too many people treat AI as a way to launder copyright, it seems likely that a lot of the current state of outright plagiarism won't stand up in court
    - bredren 7mo ago
      No IP will stand up to AI, from Star Wars to Linear. Things are about to change.
    - rchaud 7mo ago
      These cases will be settled out of court long before they ever reach a jury. Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5bn in a class action suit [0]. Others will follow. [0] https://legalblogs.wolterskluwer.com/copyright-blog/the-bartz-v-anthropic-settlement-understanding-americas-largest-copyright-settlement/ https://legalblogs.wolterskluwer.com/copyright-blog/the-bart...
petcat 7mo ago
The biggest scam the mega-clouds and the Githubs ever pulled was convincing open source developers that the GPL was somehow out of vogue and BSD/MIT/Apache was better. All so they could just vacuum it all up and resell it with impunity.
- leetrout 7mo ago
  I remember a somewhat prominent dev in the DC area putting on Twitter around 2012 or so something like "I do plenty of open source coding and I don't put a fucking license on it" and it stuck with me for all these years that it was a weird stance to take.
  - skeeter2020 7mo ago
    John Carmack said that about a week ago.
  - roryirvine 7mo ago
    Dan Bernstein took that attitude back in the 90s - I think his personal theory of copyright went something like "if it doesn't have a license, then it's obviously public domain", which ran counter to the mainstream position of "if it doesn't have a license, then you have to treat it as proprietary". And, sure, djb wasn't actually likely to sue you if you went ahead and distributed modified versions of his software... but no-one else was willing to take that risk, and it ended up killing qmail, djbdns, etc stone dead. His work ended up going to waste as a result.
    - chuckadams 7mo ago
      I doubt the lack of license was the reason DJB's projects didn't take over the world. Most of them required heavy forking to break away from hardwired assumptions about the filesystem and play nice with the OS distribution, and DJB is himself notoriously difficult to work with. Still, qmail managed to establish maildir as the standard format and kill off mbox, and for that alone I'm eternally grateful.
dirkc 7mo ago
While the license is important, it's the community that plays the key role for me. VC funder open source is not the same as community developed open source. The first can very quickly disappear because of something like a aquihire, the second has more resilience and tends to either survive and evolve, or peter out as the context changes. I'm careful to not rely too heavily on VC funded open source whenever I can avoid it.
munk-a 7mo ago
A GPL license helps but if support for a dependency is pulled you'll likely end up needing to divert more resources to maintain it anyways. There really isn't any guarantee against this cost - you either pay someone else to maintain it and hope they do a good job, build it in house and become an "also that thing" company, or follow a popular project without financially supporting it and just hope other people pick up your slack. Preferring GPL licensed software means that you're immune to a sudden cut off of access so it's always advisable - but it's really important to stay on top of dependencies and be willing to pay the cost if support is withdrawn. So GPL helps but it isn't a full salve.
WorldPeas 7mo ago
Since when has GPL stopped any company from doing so? I'd genuinely be happy to hear of a single time someone was actually pressed about their GPL compliance after FSF v. Cisco, it's like some immaterial sword of Damocles, the entire weight of which is the shame of losing face, which is fleeting in a society post-appeal-to-authority.

It's not any different from the launch of the FSF. There's a simple solution. If you don't want your lunch eaten by a private equity firm, make sure whatever tool you use is GPL licensed.

palmotea 7mo ago

> If you don't want your lunch eaten by a private equity firm, make sure whatever tool you use is GPL licensed. 1. For the record: the GPL is entirely dependent on copyright. 2. If AI "clean-room" re-implementations are allow to bypass copyright/licenses, the GPL won't protect you.

islandfox100 7mo ago
Maybe I'm reading wrong here, but what's the implication of the clean room re-implementations? Someone else is cloning with a changed license, but if I'm still on the GPL licensed tool, how am I "not protected"?
- eru 7mo ago
  There's basically no different between GPL and BSD in that case.
- darkwater 7mo ago
  1. Company A develops Project One as GPLv3 2. BigCo bus Company A 3a. usually here BigCo should continue to develop Project One as GPLv3, or stop working on it and the community would fork and it and continue working on it as GPLv3 3b. BigCo does a "clean-room" reimplementation of Project One and releases it under proprietary licence. Community can still fork the older version and work on it, but BigCo can continue to develop and sell their "original" version.
  - makapuf 7mo ago
    2. BigCo owns ProjectOne now 3a. Bigco is now free to release version N+1 as closed source only. 3b. Community can still fork the older version and work on it, but BigCo can continue to develop and sell their original version.
  - bloppe 7mo ago
    As a real world example, Redis was both Company A and BigCo. Project One is now ValKey.
goku12 7mo ago
> If AI "clean-room" re-implementations are allow to bypass copyright/licenses, the GPL won't protect you. Isn't that the same for the obligations under BSD/MIT/Apache? The problem they're trying to address is a different one from the problem of AI copyright washing. It's fair to avoid introducing additional problems while debunking another point.
worldsayshi 7mo ago
If clean-room re-implementations are allowed to bypass copyright/licenses (software) copyright is dead in general?
- justcool393 7mo ago
  well no, (clean room )reimplementations of APIs have done since time immemorial. copyright applies to the work itself. if you implement the functionality of X, software copyright protects both! patents protect ideas, copyright protects artistic expressions of ideas
  - LtWorf 7mo ago
    The problem is that, is it clean room if you read all of the code in advance?
shimman 7mo ago
"Clean room" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Having the entire corpus of knowledge for humanity and how LLMs work, how can you honestly argue in court that this is purely clean room implementation? This is right up there with Meta lawyers claiming that when they torrent it's totally legal but when a single person torrents it's copyright infringement.
- 20k 7mo ago
  Far too many people treat AI as a way to launder copyright, it seems likely that a lot of the current state of outright plagiarism won't stand up in court
  - bredren 7mo ago
    No IP will stand up to AI, from Star Wars to Linear. Things are about to change.
  - rchaud 7mo ago
    These cases will be settled out of court long before they ever reach a jury. Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5bn in a class action suit [0]. Others will follow. [0] https://legalblogs.wolterskluwer.com/copyright-blog/the-bartz-v-anthropic-settlement-understanding-americas-largest-copyright-settlement/ https://legalblogs.wolterskluwer.com/copyright-blog/the-bart...

petcat 7mo ago

The biggest scam the mega-clouds and the Githubs ever pulled was convincing open source developers that the GPL was somehow out of vogue and BSD/MIT/Apache was better. All so they could just vacuum it all up and resell it with impunity.

leetrout 7mo ago
I remember a somewhat prominent dev in the DC area putting on Twitter around 2012 or so something like "I do plenty of open source coding and I don't put a fucking license on it" and it stuck with me for all these years that it was a weird stance to take.
- skeeter2020 7mo ago
  John Carmack said that about a week ago.
- roryirvine 7mo ago
  Dan Bernstein took that attitude back in the 90s - I think his personal theory of copyright went something like "if it doesn't have a license, then it's obviously public domain", which ran counter to the mainstream position of "if it doesn't have a license, then you have to treat it as proprietary". And, sure, djb wasn't actually likely to sue you if you went ahead and distributed modified versions of his software... but no-one else was willing to take that risk, and it ended up killing qmail, djbdns, etc stone dead. His work ended up going to waste as a result.
  - chuckadams 7mo ago
    I doubt the lack of license was the reason DJB's projects didn't take over the world. Most of them required heavy forking to break away from hardwired assumptions about the filesystem and play nice with the OS distribution, and DJB is himself notoriously difficult to work with. Still, qmail managed to establish maildir as the standard format and kill off mbox, and for that alone I'm eternally grateful.

dirkc 7mo ago

While the license is important, it's the community that plays the key role for me. VC funder open source is not the same as community developed open source. The first can very quickly disappear because of something like a aquihire, the second has more resilience and tends to either survive and evolve, or peter out as the context changes. I'm careful to not rely too heavily on VC funded open source whenever I can avoid it.

munk-a 7mo ago

A GPL license helps but if support for a dependency is pulled you'll likely end up needing to divert more resources to maintain it anyways. There really isn't any guarantee against this cost - you either pay someone else to maintain it and hope they do a good job, build it in house and become an "also that thing" company, or follow a popular project without financially supporting it and just hope other people pick up your slack. Preferring GPL licensed software means that you're immune to a sudden cut off of access so it's always advisable - but it's really important to stay on top of dependencies and be willing to pay the cost if support is withdrawn. So GPL helps but it isn't a full salve.

WorldPeas 7mo ago

Since when has GPL stopped any company from doing so? I'd genuinely be happy to hear of a single time someone was actually pressed about their GPL compliance after FSF v. Cisco, it's like some immaterial sword of Damocles, the entire weight of which is the shame of losing face, which is fleeting in a society post-appeal-to-authority.