MIT Non-AI License

#1

Post by dumindunuwan » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 4:47 AM UTC

Don't we have to ask for permission before feeding someone's years of work into an AI?

MIT NON-AI License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

1. The Software and any derivative works may not be used for the purposes of training, fine-tuning, or validating artificial intelligence models or machine learning algorithms without prior written permission from the copyright holders.

2. The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Re: MIT Non-AI License

#2

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 4:51 AM UTC

What if instead of a license most won’t respect, you include a poison pill in the repo or other code storage to poison the model?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45529587

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45533842

Re: MIT Non-AI License

#3

Post by dumindunuwan » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:11 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

What if instead of a license most won’t respect, you include a poison pill in the repo or other code storage to poison the model? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45529587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45533842

This should be about get permission from open-source developers before feeding their years of work into AI. I think we should not believe what Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Google tells.

We should move to local LLMs.

Re: MIT Non-AI License

#4

Post by 01092026 » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:51 AM UTC

Interesting perspective. I think you have a right, whats yours is yours to do as you please with - you know?

But can I give you another "viewpoint"? I guess it's like, "Wow, my code, my work, what came from my brain, my fingers" - it essentially lives forever, if you think about it - it becomes embedded and compressed inside weights/tokens. Like - part of you is there.

I guess it's cool. For me it's just to know that like this super intelligent things deep down actually knows who I am - my code is in it's architecture, it gives me feeling of honor in some way. You know?

Just my take.

Re: MIT Non-AI License

#5

Post by tylerchilds » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 6:00 AM UTC

01092026 wrote: post #4

Interesting perspective. I think you have a right, whats yours is yours to do as you please with - you know? But can I give you another "viewpoint"? I guess it's like, "Wow, my code, my work, what came from my brain, my fingers" - it essentially lives forever, if you think about it - it becomes embedded and compressed inside weights/tokens. Like - part of you is there. I guess it's cool. For me it's just to know that…

I don’t always say AI pilled but

You deserve to be recognized beyond the false religion of the singularity.

Re: MIT Non-AI License

#6

Post by altairprime » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 6:06 AM UTC

Licenses have no bearing on fair use or where otherwise permitted to be ignored by law.

Re: MIT Non-AI License

#7

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 6:10 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: MIT Non-AI License

#8

Post by HumanOstrich » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 6:19 AM UTC

dumindunuwan wrote: post #3

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

What if instead of a license most won’t respect, you include a poison pill in the repo or other code storage to poison the model? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45529587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45533842

This should be about get permission from open-source developers before feeding their years of work into AI. I think we should not believe what Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Google tells. We should move to local LLMs.

How do local LLMs help?

Re: MIT Non-AI License

#9

Post by nomel » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 6:22 AM UTC

For "AI", does that include some of the more advanced search indexing and auto complete tools?

Related, would you be in violation if you hosted this in a public GitHub repo, since it's in the TOS that they use source for training AI?

Re: MIT Non-AI License

#10

Post by utopiah » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 6:24 AM UTC

I applaud the effort but honestly I see 2 cases :

- VC funded SF startups with an ethos of "Do whatever is necessary at first, scale then lawyer up once a unicorn and shits starts to hit the fan" this might try to prevent... and who will blissfully ignore it

- actually mindful actors, e.g public researchers, non-profit, etc who genuinely understand the point and will respect it but whom, ironically enough, you might want to support by providing them with more resources including your code

So... yes the intent is good but honestly I wouldn't trust the 1st category of actors to respect that. Technically what they "should" do, because it's safe and efficient, is only crawl the most popular compatible licenses, e.g. MIT, and ignore the rest. That's safe and pragmatic. Again what I expect them to do (just my hunch) is take EVERYTHING, get called on, apologize, change nothing, get brought to court, apologize again and only do something if the financial repercussion is bigger than the expected alternative. So probably still do nothing.