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The concern related to copyright is not that the AI labs would assert copyright over the code produced by their LLMs - that is a complete strawman. The concern

The concern related to copyright is not that the AI labs would assert copyright over the code produced by their LLMs - that is a complete strawman. The concern instead is that LLMs and all of their outputs may be found to be derivative works of their entire training set, and thus rendered unusable (as the training set is not distirbutable under any license). I think this ship has long sailed and no court is going to dare give such a decision given the money involved, for better or for worse. But it's a much more realistic scenario, in principle, than LLM labs going mad and attacking their own customers. Edit to add: there is another, completely different, copyright risk associated with LLMs - and one that is much more realistic. It is the fact that code generated by LLMs may not, in fact, be copyrightable at all. Which would mean that it can't be subject to the GPL. As long as it remains a minority of GCC code, this wouldn't matter much, but it could in time lead to significant portions of GCC becoming public domain, and thus cooyable, modifiable, and redistrubutable without providing the four freedoms.

7e 3mo ago
In many timelines, non-copyrightable code in GPL project doesn’t restrict the user’s freedom, since an LLM can easily reimplement the functionality clean-room. AI has brought levels of freedom to users that GNU could never do. Practical levels of freedom, leading to real, positive outcomes. Software is finally free in the real world.
- gspr 3mo ago
  Cleanroom?! What the hell kind of definition of a cleanroom is it when you get to take hundreds of GB of compressed code with you into it?!
- tsimionescu 3mo ago
  For certain use cases, probably. For others, no. For example, hardware that uses GNU software must be patchable by users (if it is patchable at all). Hardware running public software can be completely locked down to its users, regardless of how powerful of an LLM the user has access to.
olalonde 3mo ago
Courts have already set a precedent on this (it's fair use) and even if these decisions were overturned, the liability would fall on the LLM creators for the initial training, not on their users. The outputs would keep being treated individually on their own merits.
- eschaton 3mo ago
  Not really, no. There have been many settlements of lawsuits, which means they are very explicitly not precedents. The LLM companies likely prefer to settle because of the existential risk being found liable for copyright infringement would result in, whereas even an expensive settlement doesn’t upend their entire business model. Furthermore, I don’t think you can really assume that the courts will rule a certain way on this just because of the money involved; there’s a lot of money involved when it comes to the copyright holders too, and they’ve long enjoyed a rather favorable status with the courts and legislators. (For example, in the days of P2P file sharing lawsuits and attempts to legislate P2P file sharing, the software industry was already many times the size of the media industry, but the media industry consistently won.)
  - olalonde 3mo ago
    I was referring to this decision: "To summarize the analysis that now follows, the use of the books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. And, the digitization of the books purchased in print form by Anthropic was also a fair use but not for the same reason as applies to the training copies. Instead, it was a fair use because all Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies." https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/jnvwbgqlzpw/ANTHROPIC%20fair%20use.pdf https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/jnvwbgqlzpw/... IANAL and don't know how significant this decision is, but it is, at the very least, how one judge views it. Personally, I don't think judges will rule a certain way because of the money involved but because it seems clear that training a ML model is highly transformative.
raggi 3mo ago
The mental model of slow decay into copyable is complicated. The code base is already a wash with contributions that have low copyrightability in US case law anyway, things derived directly from external architecture or documentation in barely novel ways, common system interfaces, and so on. LLM output is another output of this kind of class and sure sometimes large contributions happen that seem more significant, but they likely have little bearing on the work as a whole given it's earlier design provenance (at least for established and massive projects like this). What is likely to get more muddy over time is the accuracy of any copyright registration, and the enforcement of copyright infringements on portions of the whole. These are already complicated cases and definitely so for compilers with so much "scènes à faire". It's not clear how much this has a negative impact on cases around the whole, which tend to be the more important cases for the four freedoms that, while they have other intentions, have a primary intention of ensuring that the whole continues to be available for redistribution and extension in perpetuity. I do not think that there is a clear link between these two areas at all, and the GPL's most important intents may be far safer long term than concerns of dilution suggest.

7e 3mo ago

In many timelines, non-copyrightable code in GPL project doesn’t restrict the user’s freedom, since an LLM can easily reimplement the functionality clean-room. AI has brought levels of freedom to users that GNU could never do. Practical levels of freedom, leading to real, positive outcomes. Software is finally free in the real world.

gspr 3mo ago
Cleanroom?! What the hell kind of definition of a cleanroom is it when you get to take hundreds of GB of compressed code with you into it?!
tsimionescu 3mo ago
For certain use cases, probably. For others, no. For example, hardware that uses GNU software must be patchable by users (if it is patchable at all). Hardware running public software can be completely locked down to its users, regardless of how powerful of an LLM the user has access to.

olalonde 3mo ago

Courts have already set a precedent on this (it's fair use) and even if these decisions were overturned, the liability would fall on the LLM creators for the initial training, not on their users. The outputs would keep being treated individually on their own merits.

eschaton 3mo ago
Not really, no. There have been many settlements of lawsuits, which means they are very explicitly not precedents. The LLM companies likely prefer to settle because of the existential risk being found liable for copyright infringement would result in, whereas even an expensive settlement doesn’t upend their entire business model. Furthermore, I don’t think you can really assume that the courts will rule a certain way on this just because of the money involved; there’s a lot of money involved when it comes to the copyright holders too, and they’ve long enjoyed a rather favorable status with the courts and legislators. (For example, in the days of P2P file sharing lawsuits and attempts to legislate P2P file sharing, the software industry was already many times the size of the media industry, but the media industry consistently won.)
- olalonde 3mo ago
  I was referring to this decision: "To summarize the analysis that now follows, the use of the books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. And, the digitization of the books purchased in print form by Anthropic was also a fair use but not for the same reason as applies to the training copies. Instead, it was a fair use because all Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies." https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/jnvwbgqlzpw/ANTHROPIC%20fair%20use.pdf https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/jnvwbgqlzpw/... IANAL and don't know how significant this decision is, but it is, at the very least, how one judge views it. Personally, I don't think judges will rule a certain way because of the money involved but because it seems clear that training a ML model is highly transformative.

raggi 3mo ago

The mental model of slow decay into copyable is complicated. The code base is already a wash with contributions that have low copyrightability in US case law anyway, things derived directly from external architecture or documentation in barely novel ways, common system interfaces, and so on. LLM output is another output of this kind of class and sure sometimes large contributions happen that seem more significant, but they likely have little bearing on the work as a whole given it's earlier design provenance (at least for established and massive projects like this). What is likely to get more muddy over time is the accuracy of any copyright registration, and the enforcement of copyright infringements on portions of the whole. These are already complicated cases and definitely so for compilers with so much "scènes à faire". It's not clear how much this has a negative impact on cases around the whole, which tend to be the more important cases for the four freedoms that, while they have other intentions, have a primary intention of ensuring that the whole continues to be available for redistribution and extension in perpetuity. I do not think that there is a clear link between these two areas at all, and the GPL's most important intents may be far safer long term than concerns of dilution suggest.