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Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

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Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#31

Post by googlryas »

bugfix-66 wrote: post #18
googlryas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn't license code. That's just license text that happens to be in a string. Not sure why this bugfix site is being used instead of just pastebin with text.

I'm presenting the license text in a creative and unusual way that real hackers might enjoy. If that confused you, or you consider it "obnoxious", then you are not the target audience. That's ok. Hacker News is not 100% hackers!

I think it is more likely you are just baldly shilling your website. Which is a shame, because I think the site isn't a bad idea - I like the minimal interface and the thought you've put into hints for many not-quite-right solutions. I've seen quality links you've posted in the past with more interesting, subtle, and relevant bugs - but this isn't one of them.

Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#32

Post by oadster »

jongjong wrote: post #3

This is a great idea but I don't understand why I need to provide this service full write access to my public repos. Shouldn't full read access suffice?

We wanted to be able in the future to be able to automatically add / append the license text to the file. Adding the licenses one by one would be tedious so coming up with a way to bulk add the licenses seems essential.

Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#33

Post by s-lambert »

tarunmuvvala wrote: post #5

Thanks for taking the initiative. there is very little awareness and implication of this. I am not a developer, but I understand how generative AI leveraging your work to make it easier for someone else. A similar thing needs to be done for images too.

>I am not a developer, but I understand how generative AI leveraging your work to make it easier for someone else.

To me this sounds like it's antithetical to open source software because the point of making software open source is so that other people can leverage your work. It shouldn't matter if it's done through generative AI or through a human's brain.

Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#34

Post by oadster »

carom wrote: post #21

Anyone have the text of the clause? I clicked the get started link but it wanted to log in on my Github. I did not see it in the FAQ.

"Use of the Software by any person to train, teach, prompt, populate, or otherwise further or facilitate any so-called generative artificial intelligence, generative algorithm, generative adversarial network, generative model, or similar or related activity (or to attempt to perform any of the foregoing acts or activity), whether in connection with any so-called machine learning, deep learning, neural network, or similar or related framework, system, or model or otherwise, is strictly prohibited and beyond the limited scope of this license, absent prior payment to licensor of the licensing fee of the amount of ____"

Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#35

Post by bugfix-66 »

googlryas wrote: post #31
bugfix-66 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm presenting the license text in a creative and unusual way that real hackers might enjoy. If that confused you, or you consider it "obnoxious", then you are not the target audience. That's ok. Hacker News is not 100% hackers!

I think it is more likely you are just baldly shilling your website. Which is a shame, because I think the site isn't a bad idea - I like the minimal interface and the thought you've put into hints for many not-quite-right solutions. I've seen quality links you've posted in the past with more interesting, subtle, and relevant bugs - but this isn't one of them.

I have a different Hacker News account for every one of my projects. It happens that the No-AI 3-Clause License became part of the BUGFIX-66 project. I'm sorry that upsets you, but I'm sure you'll get over it. Happy Thanksgiving.

Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#36

Post by briga »

It certainly raises some interesting questions. After a model has been trained is there really any surefire way to prove that these models are profiting from your individual code? How is this different, from, say, search indexing in Google? Imagine Wikipedia wants to sue Google for stealing their content. Google essential keeps a mirror of Wikipedia and uses that data to serve up better search results (sometimes). But is there legal group to stand on in such a situation? It seems hard to prove that Company X made Y dollars off your individual code or text, therefore Company X owes you money.

In any case it raises some other questions about intellectual property as a whole. If you can sue an AI model for profiting off your intellectual property, why can't you sue a human for the same? Say you read a book one day, and are so inspired that you go ahead and write a new book. Imagine you publish that new book and sell millions of copies. Are you entitled to pay royalties to the author who gave you inspiration? It seems to me that unless you're plagiarizing large chunks of the original work verbatim, you probably shouldn't be forced to owe the original author much of anything. LLMs do plagiarize, but they do so somewhat inconsistently due to their non-deterministic output (just like humans!).

Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#37

Post by jongjong »

oadster wrote: post #32
jongjong wrote: post #3

This is a great idea but I don't understand why I need to provide this service full write access to my public repos. Shouldn't full read access suffice?

We wanted to be able in the future to be able to automatically add / append the license text to the file. Adding the licenses one by one would be tedious so coming up with a way to bulk add the licenses seems essential.

Fair enough but I have some heavily used open source projects on GitHub so I can't take the risk. It would be great if there was a read-only option.

Also, some of my open source projects have an explicit clause which states that 'The source of this code shall not be misrepresented' so if chunks of my code showed up in some AI-generated code without attribution, it would be a pretty clear-cut case.

Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#38

Post by sanxiyn »

s-lambert wrote: post #33
tarunmuvvala wrote: post #5

Thanks for taking the initiative. there is very little awareness and implication of this. I am not a developer, but I understand how generative AI leveraging your work to make it easier for someone else. A similar thing needs to be done for images too.

>I am not a developer, but I understand how generative AI leveraging your work to make it easier for someone else. To me this sounds like it's antithetical to open source software because the point of making software open source is so that other people can leverage your work. It shouldn't matter if it's done through generative AI or through a human's brain.

Why shouldn't it matter? Many open source licenses require attribution, so it is reasonable to think one point of making software open source is to get attribution. Generative AI prevents getting attribution, so it matters whether it is through generative AI or human brain.

Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#39

Post by biosed »

echelon wrote: post #14
ipsum2 wrote: post #4

If you put your code on Github, it's bound by the TOS, which states ( https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... ): > We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Servi…

It shouldn't even hinge on a TOS. If Microsoft loses this case, it actually means Microsoft wins and we all lose. Who has a large enough corpora of training data? Only institutional copyright holders. This is probably going to play out like Oracle vs. Google when Google suddenly realized that they should lose and intentionally threw the case. I'm so worried about this case. Treating copyrighted training data as fair…

> Oracle vs. Google when Google suddenly realized that they should lose and intentionally threw the case.

But Google won?

Re: Generative AI profits off your code. Make them pay for it

#40

Post by sanxiyn »

ipsum2 wrote: post #4

If you put your code on Github, it's bound by the TOS, which states ( https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... ): > We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Servi…

I agree Humans Only Clause does not prevent Microsoft from training Copilot from codes on GitHub due to GitHub's terms of service, but I think it does prevent, say, Salesforce from training its CodeGen model.

So if the clause is widely adopted, it may be good for Microsoft and bad for Salesforce. If you want to reward Microsoft and punish Salesforce, it may be a good idea.

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