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“I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

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Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#41

Post by kbenson »

EdSchouten wrote: post #26
horstmeyer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that when Copilot automatically inserts some GPL licensed code fragment into your project, your project automatically has to become GPL licensed, whether you want and realize or not.

But the same can happen with BSD licensed code, right? That license also has certain requirements that need to remain fulfilled. I don’t see how the GPL is special in the discussion around Copilot.

The GPL license is license-viral, the BSD license is just attribution-viral, as I understand it.

For BSD licensed code, you must reproduce the license and attribution for that code, but the rest of the code can be licensed as you want. For GPL code there are additional requirements.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#42

Post by jonas21 »

EdSchouten wrote: post #26
horstmeyer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that when Copilot automatically inserts some GPL licensed code fragment into your project, your project automatically has to become GPL licensed, whether you want and realize or not.

But the same can happen with BSD licensed code, right? That license also has certain requirements that need to remain fulfilled. I don’t see how the GPL is special in the discussion around Copilot.

You could presumably satisfy this requirement by linking to a giant file containing the license blocks for all BSD code that it was trained on.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#43

Post by bifrost »

eitland wrote: post #37
bifrost wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPL is certainly better than a license prohibiting commercial use. The GPL prohibits some commercial use. The BSD license does not.

> The GPL prohibits some commercial use. > The BSD license does not. Really a nitpick but is this actually true? I mean the GPL actually defends your right to do whatever you want with the software including selling or renting it out. What it restrict is what limitations you can put on those who use it, but (and here comes the nitpick): prohibiting others from using something in a certain way isn't what I'd call "com…

Yes, it is true in the way that you're talking about it.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#44

Post by happymellon »

EdSchouten wrote: post #26
horstmeyer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that when Copilot automatically inserts some GPL licensed code fragment into your project, your project automatically has to become GPL licensed, whether you want and realize or not.

But the same can happen with BSD licensed code, right? That license also has certain requirements that need to remain fulfilled. I don’t see how the GPL is special in the discussion around Copilot.

This is the fundamental difference between BSD and GPL.

GPL is is Open Source but for you to benefit, you have to make derivative works GPL.

BSD is Open Source and you can close derivatives so that you benefit and you don't have to share back.

I'm not sure how you don't see how an auto-suggest tool that inserts GPL code into yours is different to BSD.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#45

Post by renewiltord »

bifrost wrote: post #34
toast0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also said in the thread that his partners wouldn't have gone for it, so he may have thought BSD was better back then too, but went with what he could do. Releasing the engine code at all was a big deal back then, and inspired some others to do so, but others sometimes had more restrictive than GPL licenses; GPL is certainly better than a license prohibiting commercial use.

> GPL is certainly better than a license prohibiting commercial use. The GPL prohibits some commercial use. The BSD license does not.

The BSD also prohibits some commercial use.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#46

Post by an_opabinia »

young_unixer wrote: post #31
kaptain wrote: post #11

I’ve looked at some of the Copilot threads but am unable to follow the issue. Can someone summarize what the issue is with Copilot and why a BSD license would have been significant for the code?

1. Someone expressed their concern that fragments of GPL code would end up in projects with non-GPL licenses and called it open source laundering. They were also concerned about the interpretation of derivative work. Could copilot's output be considered a derivative work? https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1410037309848752128?lang=en 2. Someone posted how copilot reproduced the famous fast inverse square root function…

> open source laundering

Microsoft already launders open source code by just hiring people in China and Romania to rewrite it. Copilot is their engineering culture distilled. However most big companies do this.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#47

Post by simion314 »

horstmeyer wrote: post #21
kaptain wrote: post #11

I’ve looked at some of the Copilot threads but am unable to follow the issue. Can someone summarize what the issue is with Copilot and why a BSD license would have been significant for the code?

My understanding is that when Copilot automatically inserts some GPL licensed code fragment into your project, your project automatically has to become GPL licensed, whether you want and realize or not.

>your project, your project automatically has to become GPL licensed, whether you want and realize or not.

This is not exactly true, GPL is not magic that automatically re-licenses your code behind your back. What actually happens is your are in violation of the GPL , one way to solve the violation is that you re-license your code (so you have to do it, it is not happening behind your back automatically). I am not aware of any case where someone did not want to GPL the software and a judge forced him to do it. This kind of problems are also happening with proprietary license, some developer copy-pastes some properietary code and in the end you have to make ti right remove the code and make a deal with the party you damaged.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#48

Post by epaga »

I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever.

GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations.

But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests.

Those two things do not have to be synonyms. I'd much rather allow the second if it means tolerating the first.

(Edit: Seeing the downvotes, I'd be genuinely interested in counter-arguments or thoughts on this)

(Edit 2: Just because it keeps coming up, let me make absolutely clear that I do NOT in any way think GPL might never be a valid choice, nor that anyone, myself included, should feel "entitled" to "free as in *.*" code.)

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#49

Post by EdSchouten »

happymellon wrote: post #44
EdSchouten wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the same can happen with BSD licensed code, right? That license also has certain requirements that need to remain fulfilled. I don’t see how the GPL is special in the discussion around Copilot.

This is the fundamental difference between BSD and GPL. GPL is is Open Source but for you to benefit, you have to make derivative works GPL. BSD is Open Source and you can close derivatives so that you benefit and you don't have to share back. I'm not sure how you don't see how an auto-suggest tool that inserts GPL code into yours is different to BSD.

Does Copilot in its current form auto-inject copyright notices for all BSD licensed code from which output is derived? As far as I know, it does not.

This means that authors of BSD licensed code have their rights violated to the same degree as those of GPL licensed code.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#50

Post by varajelle »

faho wrote: post #28
wsc981 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no empirical evidence in what he says Didn't Apple remove all GPL-based code from the whole iOS and macOS dev infrastructure at some point due to GPL licensing concerns? I also believe Apple sticked for a very long time to an older version of GCC in the past, due to licensing concerns of newer versions of GCC [0]. That was, until Apple replaced GCC with Clang. And I am not sure if GPL-based code can even b…

Apple specifically avoids code licensed under GPL 3 , which wasn't even released at the time Carmack's code was licensed. The concern there seems to be the anti-"tivoization" provisions, which could force Apple to allow people to replace GPLv3'd code.

I believe the concern was more about the patent closes from the GPLv3
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