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> The giant plagiarism machines have already stolen everything. Copyright is dead. Licenses are washed away in clean rooms. Isn't this what the free software m

> The giant plagiarism machines have already stolen everything. Copyright is dead. Licenses are washed away in clean rooms. Isn't this what the free software movement wanted? Code available to all? Yes, code is cheap now. That's the new reality. Your value lies elsewhere. You can lament the loss of your usefulness as a horse buggy mechanic, or you can adapt your knowledge and experience and use it towards those newfangled automobiles.

sdevonoes 7mo ago
Progress is good. But why on earth should we support Anthropic/OpenAI/etc? What the planet needs is less multibillion corporations, not more
- kstenerud 7mo ago
  You don't have to. Just like you don't have to support Amazon for web services and file stores. Or Oracle for databases. Or Microsoft for operating systems. Or DEC for computers. There are perfectly good open source LLMs and agents out there, which are getting better by the day (especially after the recent leak!)
- farfatched 7mo ago
  I want to support local models and compute over SaaS models. I want to support RISC V over Intel. I want other things too, and on balance, Intel+Anthropic is most compliant with my various preferences, even if they're not perfect.
mmustapic 7mo ago
No, the free software movement wants that the source code of the software you use be available to you to modify it if you wish. AI does not necessarily do that.
- kstenerud 7mo ago
  AI makes the entirety of the software engineering profession available to you. All you have to do is ask the right way, and you can build in days what once took months or years. Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied. Closed source is no longer the moat it was, and so keeping the source code to yourself is only going to hurt you as people pass you over for companies who realize this, and strive to make it easier for your LLM to figure their systems out.
  - Arkhaine_kupo 7mo ago
    > Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied. Jesus christ. "The people who wanted everyone to have a home should be happy with the invention of the lockpick. You can just find a nice house and open the lock and move in. Ignore the lockpick company charging essentially whatver they want for lockpicks or how they got accesss to everyones keyfob, or the danger of someone breaking into your house" That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either... The open source community wants people to upskill, people become tech literate, free solutions that grow organically out of people who care, features the community needs and wants and people having the freedom to modify that code to solve their own circumstances.
    - Supermancho 7mo ago
      > That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either... Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument. It's not an argument anymore. It's already happened. How one might choose to characterize the reality, is irrelevant. A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open, for better or worse. Granted, this is to the chagrin of subgroups that had been pushing different strategies.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
lmm 7mo ago
> Isn't this what the free software movement wanted? Code available to all? Available to all yes. Not available to the giant corpos while the lone hobbyist still fears getting sued to oblivion. In fact that's pretty much the opposite of what the free software movement wanted. Also the other thing the free software movement wanted was to be able to fix bugs in the code they had to use, which AI is pulling us further and further away from.
- thedevilslawyer 7mo ago
  What is the FUD? Which hobbyist is fearing being sued? Any credible citations?
probably_wrong 7mo ago
> Isn't this what the free software movement wanted? Code available to all? But this is not that. The current situations is closer to "what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine". I have been releasing my writings under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which requires attribution and that anything built upon the material to be distributed "under the same license as the original". And yet I have no access to OpenAI's built-upon material (I know for a fact they scrape my posts) while they get my data for free. This is so far legal, but it's probably not ethical and definitely not what the free software movement wanted.
- joquarky 7mo ago
  What should be the maximum allowable cyclomatic complexity of license conditions?
- lostmsu 7mo ago
  You can download Qwen 3.5 under Apache 2.0
- thedevilslawyer 7mo ago
  >not what the free software movement wanted Sorry, you don't speak for the movement. Plenty of us want this world.
  - probably_wrong 7mo ago
    No one speaks for everyone, but when TiVo used the GNU license in a similar one-sided way the free software movement reacted by creating a new GNU preventing exactly that. And, again, the Creative Commons license I'm using was designed (perhaps ineffectively) to prevent precisely this situation. So I feel confident saying that the past actions of the main referents of the free software movement support my view.
    - thedevilslawyer 7mo ago
      Sorry I was being polite. I'm part of the free software world, and you don't speak for me. And I like the new freedoms that I have to make more free software and free existing proprietary software by remaking them as free.
toofy 7mo ago
i can say with a pretty high confidence level that few people in the free software movement want the closed off black boxes these companies are locking away. they’re not free in any sense of the word. from price to openness of the models. would openai cry if every bit of their models were wide open for us to use however we see fit? if so, then it’s not free, again, in any definition of the word.
- joquarky 7mo ago
  Every time Walmart does something evil, I cry myself to sleep when I realize I can never go to Walmart again. Local models are a thing.

sdevonoes 7mo ago

Progress is good. But why on earth should we support Anthropic/OpenAI/etc? What the planet needs is less multibillion corporations, not more

kstenerud 7mo ago
You don't have to. Just like you don't have to support Amazon for web services and file stores. Or Oracle for databases. Or Microsoft for operating systems. Or DEC for computers. There are perfectly good open source LLMs and agents out there, which are getting better by the day (especially after the recent leak!)
farfatched 7mo ago
I want to support local models and compute over SaaS models. I want to support RISC V over Intel. I want other things too, and on balance, Intel+Anthropic is most compliant with my various preferences, even if they're not perfect.

mmustapic 7mo ago

No, the free software movement wants that the source code of the software you use be available to you to modify it if you wish. AI does not necessarily do that.

kstenerud 7mo ago
AI makes the entirety of the software engineering profession available to you. All you have to do is ask the right way, and you can build in days what once took months or years. Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied. Closed source is no longer the moat it was, and so keeping the source code to yourself is only going to hurt you as people pass you over for companies who realize this, and strive to make it easier for your LLM to figure their systems out.
- Arkhaine_kupo 7mo ago
  > Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied. Jesus christ. "The people who wanted everyone to have a home should be happy with the invention of the lockpick. You can just find a nice house and open the lock and move in. Ignore the lockpick company charging essentially whatver they want for lockpicks or how they got accesss to everyones keyfob, or the danger of someone breaking into your house" That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either... The open source community wants people to upskill, people become tech literate, free solutions that grow organically out of people who care, features the community needs and wants and people having the freedom to modify that code to solve their own circumstances.
  - Supermancho 7mo ago
    > That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either... Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument. It's not an argument anymore. It's already happened. How one might choose to characterize the reality, is irrelevant. A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open, for better or worse. Granted, this is to the chagrin of subgroups that had been pushing different strategies.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

lmm 7mo ago

> Isn't this what the free software movement wanted? Code available to all? Available to all yes. Not available to the giant corpos while the lone hobbyist still fears getting sued to oblivion. In fact that's pretty much the opposite of what the free software movement wanted. Also the other thing the free software movement wanted was to be able to fix bugs in the code they had to use, which AI is pulling us further and further away from.

thedevilslawyer 7mo ago
What is the FUD? Which hobbyist is fearing being sued? Any credible citations?

probably_wrong 7mo ago

> Isn't this what the free software movement wanted? Code available to all? But this is not that. The current situations is closer to "what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine". I have been releasing my writings under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which requires attribution and that anything built upon the material to be distributed "under the same license as the original". And yet I have no access to OpenAI's built-upon material (I know for a fact they scrape my posts) while they get my data for free. This is so far legal, but it's probably not ethical and definitely not what the free software movement wanted.

joquarky 7mo ago
What should be the maximum allowable cyclomatic complexity of license conditions?
lostmsu 7mo ago
You can download Qwen 3.5 under Apache 2.0
thedevilslawyer 7mo ago
>not what the free software movement wanted Sorry, you don't speak for the movement. Plenty of us want this world.
- probably_wrong 7mo ago
  No one speaks for everyone, but when TiVo used the GNU license in a similar one-sided way the free software movement reacted by creating a new GNU preventing exactly that. And, again, the Creative Commons license I'm using was designed (perhaps ineffectively) to prevent precisely this situation. So I feel confident saying that the past actions of the main referents of the free software movement support my view.
  - thedevilslawyer 7mo ago
    Sorry I was being polite. I'm part of the free software world, and you don't speak for me. And I like the new freedoms that I have to make more free software and free existing proprietary software by remaking them as free.

toofy 7mo ago

i can say with a pretty high confidence level that few people in the free software movement want the closed off black boxes these companies are locking away. they’re not free in any sense of the word. from price to openness of the models. would openai cry if every bit of their models were wide open for us to use however we see fit? if so, then it’s not free, again, in any definition of the word.

joquarky 7mo ago
Every time Walmart does something evil, I cry myself to sleep when I realize I can never go to Walmart again. Local models are a thing.