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> it's still your code I wholly agree with your comment, but is it legally "your code"? Copyright is implicit at the moment of human creation. But there isn't

> it's still your code I wholly agree with your comment, but is it legally "your code"? Copyright is implicit at the moment of human creation. But there isn't yet settled law on AI-assisted creation. So it might be a problem for projects to accept contributions where it's not clear who actually owns that work.

tonyarkles 1mo ago
Not a lawyer, but to some degree I think policies like the one Debian came up with can help the argument. You’re not submitting a stream of commits that all have an Authored-By: Claude Code footer and massive yappy commits and comments. The policy essentially forces there to be a degree of human authorship to each commit even if some of the bits came from LLM assistance.
jfoster 1mo ago
At this point, who could bring a copyright claim? Well, considering the massive AI training effort hoovering everything up, seems it might be approximately everyone. Who would they be making the claim against? Well, considering the massive uptake of AI across the tech industry & beyond... approximately everyone. Yes, the model companies are in the middle, but it's getting to the point where it seems a bit doubtful that claims will have any significant outcomes. NYT might be able to get OpenAI to pay them for their content, but that's more of a financial tweak than a up-ending of industry.
- dfxm12 1mo ago
  Different models have different licensing. Maybe open ai or anthropic doesn't claim ownership of output today, but some companies do. https://www.recraft.ai/docs/trust-and-security/ownership https://www.recraft.ai/docs/trust-and-security/ownership I imagine few can afford a legal battle... Free plan Images generated on the Free plan are public and owned by Recraft
  - jfoster 1mo ago
    Feels like those kinds of terms are moot in the big picture. Could they enforce it? Perhaps they can if a significant amount of the data produced is their IP, but who would they enforce it against? Consumers? Not much to be gained by going after them. I can only think that they are hoping businesses might use the free plan and that they can sell them paid plans as part of an enforcement effort, but it doesn't seem like a very sustainable approach given the industry standard is to not claim ownership.
deleted 1mo ago
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rfgplk 1mo ago
> Copyright Literally irrelevant and I have no idea why people even bring this up constantly. Copyright is practically unenforceable in the software world, when was the last time you saw someone (a company or an individual) actually sue _and win_? Apple wasn't capable of stopping all the other phone manufacturers from directly cloning their product (despite having patents & copyright) so how can an individual? The only thing that matters is execution. For instance, my repos are cloned like ~100/week by what I presume are bots and AI lab scrapers using them for training material. How am I supposed to even find out who's doing it, and if they're abiding by the licenses I provided? It's impossible. Lastly, having copyright isn't the same thing as being allowed to commercialize the software (and I believe loads of people confuse the two). You can still sell public domain code, even if you don't have copyright over it.
- ravenstine 1mo ago
  Software is one of the most derivative types of works ever invented. It's arguably based on copying what other people have already created. The modern world would look a lot more primitive if this wasn't the case. Corporations like Coca-Cola long ago figured out that begging people not to steal your ideas is a waste of time. If you don't want people using your ideas, then don't share them. Dunno why so many programmers don't get this and seem perpetually butthurt that other programmers figured out the ultimate way for programmers to rip off each other's code.
  - account42 1mo ago
    Coca-Cola literally shares their idea in every bottle they sell. The recipe being locked up in some super secure vault is a marketing gimmick and and has not relevance on anyone else being able to create clones of their drinks.
- dgellow 1mo ago
  That might be your intuition but it’s not how the law works for code ownership. It’s very relevant for free software given the whole principle of free software is a copyright hack that protects a set of freedoms by relying on the copyright being recognized and enforceable. If you drop the copyright claim you drop the protection of free software freedoms.

tonyarkles 1mo ago

Not a lawyer, but to some degree I think policies like the one Debian came up with can help the argument. You’re not submitting a stream of commits that all have an Authored-By: Claude Code footer and massive yappy commits and comments. The policy essentially forces there to be a degree of human authorship to each commit even if some of the bits came from LLM assistance.

jfoster 1mo ago

At this point, who could bring a copyright claim? Well, considering the massive AI training effort hoovering everything up, seems it might be approximately everyone. Who would they be making the claim against? Well, considering the massive uptake of AI across the tech industry & beyond... approximately everyone. Yes, the model companies are in the middle, but it's getting to the point where it seems a bit doubtful that claims will have any significant outcomes. NYT might be able to get OpenAI to pay them for their content, but that's more of a financial tweak than a up-ending of industry.

dfxm12 1mo ago
Different models have different licensing. Maybe open ai or anthropic doesn't claim ownership of output today, but some companies do. https://www.recraft.ai/docs/trust-and-security/ownership https://www.recraft.ai/docs/trust-and-security/ownership I imagine few can afford a legal battle... Free plan Images generated on the Free plan are public and owned by Recraft
- jfoster 1mo ago
  Feels like those kinds of terms are moot in the big picture. Could they enforce it? Perhaps they can if a significant amount of the data produced is their IP, but who would they enforce it against? Consumers? Not much to be gained by going after them. I can only think that they are hoping businesses might use the free plan and that they can sell them paid plans as part of an enforcement effort, but it doesn't seem like a very sustainable approach given the industry standard is to not claim ownership.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

rfgplk 1mo ago

> Copyright Literally irrelevant and I have no idea why people even bring this up constantly. Copyright is practically unenforceable in the software world, when was the last time you saw someone (a company or an individual) actually sue _and win_? Apple wasn't capable of stopping all the other phone manufacturers from directly cloning their product (despite having patents & copyright) so how can an individual? The only thing that matters is execution. For instance, my repos are cloned like ~100/week by what I presume are bots and AI lab scrapers using them for training material. How am I supposed to even find out who's doing it, and if they're abiding by the licenses I provided? It's impossible. Lastly, having copyright isn't the same thing as being allowed to commercialize the software (and I believe loads of people confuse the two). You can still sell public domain code, even if you don't have copyright over it.

ravenstine 1mo ago
Software is one of the most derivative types of works ever invented. It's arguably based on copying what other people have already created. The modern world would look a lot more primitive if this wasn't the case. Corporations like Coca-Cola long ago figured out that begging people not to steal your ideas is a waste of time. If you don't want people using your ideas, then don't share them. Dunno why so many programmers don't get this and seem perpetually butthurt that other programmers figured out the ultimate way for programmers to rip off each other's code.
- account42 1mo ago
  Coca-Cola literally shares their idea in every bottle they sell. The recipe being locked up in some super secure vault is a marketing gimmick and and has not relevance on anyone else being able to create clones of their drinks.
dgellow 1mo ago
That might be your intuition but it’s not how the law works for code ownership. It’s very relevant for free software given the whole principle of free software is a copyright hack that protects a set of freedoms by relying on the copyright being recognized and enforceable. If you drop the copyright claim you drop the protection of free software freedoms.