4 ms·
People taking your work and not giving anything back was ALWAYS the risk you took when writing free software. LLM training doesn't change that much. That the us
by bjourne 5mo ago
People taking your work and not giving anything back was ALWAYS the risk you took when writing free software. LLM training doesn't change that much. That the us military no doubt is using gcc to compile embedded software for their icbm:s no doubt irks the gnu people. But you can't have it any other way. "You can only use my software for good things" just is not consistent with "free software".
- TheOtherHobbes 5mo agoThere's an almost intergalactic level of irony in the extent to which open source has benefited giant corporations and the military at the expense of individuals, and ultimately contributed to the commercialised enclosure of software IP. I suppose you could argue it also indirectly led to the empowerment of non-developers to create their own vibe coded solutions. But we're not quite there yet. And the AI IP that makes that possible is still enclosed rather than open.
- fragmede 5mo ago> But we're not quite there yet. Judging from the number of projects I've seen from people who aren't software developers, we're there enough.
- nine_k 5mo agoDon't open-weight models sort of returning the favor?
- Gormo 5mo ago> There's an almost intergalactic level of irony in the extent to which open source has benefited giant corporations and the military at the expense of individuals, and ultimately contributed to the commercialised enclosure of software IP. Could you perhaps explain that irony a bit more explicitly? Can you provide any examples of "commercialized enclosure of software IP" somehow backwashing into the FOSS ecosystem and closing things up that are already open?
- bjourne 5mo agoSure, Free Software hasn't been the vehicle for societal change that RMS and others certainly hoped. I remember being flamed out in a user group for suggesting that our conference shouldn't be held in a "non-free" country such as Morocco, Turkey, or China because it's counter-productive to freedom. Very few people actually got it. But it's orthogonal to LLM trainers also using free software in "non-approved" ways.
- LtWorf 5mo ago> it also indirectly led to the empowerment of non-developers to create their own vibe coded solutions. Nobody is empowered to do that because the models to do that aren't free.
- Gormo 5mo agoYeah, I really can't comprehend these sentiments as anything other than an "I don't like AI" argument. FOSS has always been about just writing code and putting it out into the world where others can do as they please with it. I see a lot of risks involved in people surrendering their own decision-making to LLMs, but that's a question of how they're used, not how they're trained. The idea that using FOSS software to train LLMs is somehow a violation of FOSS norms just doesn't seem valid.
- xigoi 5mo ago> FOSS has always been about just writing code and putting it out into the world where others can do as they please with it. Not true. Most FOSS licenses require attribution and many require derivatives to be released under the same license.
- Gormo 5mo agoSure, but I guess I'm not seeing the relevance here. Are we seeing some greater-than-normal wave of people redistributing FOSS code without attribution, or creating derivative works without adhering to the license terms? LLM training doesn't seem to be either of these things.
- xigoi 5mo agoWe are seeing megacorporations (SlopenAI, Antslopic, Microslop, etc.) distributing derivatives of open-source code (their LLMs) without attribution.
- Gormo 5mo agoCan you point to some specific examples of products shipped by the companies I assume you're referring to here that are in fact unattributed derivative works of GPL-licensed software? Or are you saying that you think anything generated by an LLM qualifies as a derivative work of anything included in its training data?
- xigoi 5mo agoBefore LLMs, you could use the GNU GPL or other copyleft licenses to protect your code from being used to develop non-free software. Unfortunately, the courts have decided that LLMs are free to ignore licenses.
- bjourne 5mo agoCopyleft is about republishing. You can't prevent anyone from using your compiler or text editor to develop non-free software.