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Coding agents could make free software matter again

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Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#191

Post by Nursie »

hparadiz wrote: post #125
rpdillon wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal take is that LLMs are so transformative that they are likely not going to qualify under derivative works and therefore GPL wouldn't hold sway. There's already some evidence that courts will consider training on copyrighted material fair use, so long as it is otherwise obtained legally, which would be the case with software licensed under GPL. I realize this is an unpopular opinion on HN, but I believe it…

You can train models locally now and use open source ones and there's a robust community of people training, retraining, and generally pulling data from anywhere. And then new models get trained on old models. The models in use now are already several generations deep even further trained on code freely given by the entire industry. It's like complaining about being 1/100000th of a soup with no real proof you're even…

> It's like complaining about being 1/100000th of a soup with no real proof you're even in it.

I love a good analogy, especially one that takes a complex situation in which esoteric, unusual conditions are distilled and related back to common experiences held by the reader, such that all can understand.

Next time I'm a small part of a soup I'll think of this.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#192

Post by impjohn »

cyberclimb wrote: post #190

> Why does this matter? Because the “open source” rebrand wasn’t just a marketing change — it was a philosophical amputation. I cringe whenever I see such an AI generated sentence and unfortunately it devalues the article

AI writing feels like putting a michelin course into a blender and drinking it

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#193

Post by heyethan »

627467 wrote: post #137
apatheticonion wrote: post #21

Having over a decade of open source software I've written freely available online, I actually really appreciate the value that AI && LLMs have provided me. The thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the fact that my works were likely included in the training data and, if it doesn't violate my licenses (GNU 2/3), it certainly feels against the spirit of what I intended when distributing my works. I was made redu…

> I was made redundant recently "due to AI" (questionable) and it feels like my works in some way contributed to my redundancy where my works contributed to the profits made by these AI megacorps while I am left a victim. I think anyone here can understand and even share that feeling. And I agree with your "questionable" - its just the lame HR excuse du jour. My 2c: - AI megacorps aren't the only ones gaining, we all…

[flagged]

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#194

Post by wiseowise »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #170
wiseowise wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We aren't losing code; we are making the ability to code a universal human "literacy." LLMs making the ability to code a universal human “literacy” is like saying that Markov chain is making the ability to write a universal human “literacy”.

Comparing LLMs to Markov chains was funny in 2023.

I’m not comparing LLMs to Markov chain, read again.

Coding through LLMs is like writing through Markov chains.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#195

Post by graemep »

As1287 wrote: post #113
throwaway27448 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intellectual property never made much sense to begin with. But it certainly makes no sense now, where the common creator has no protections against greedy corporate giants who are happy to wield the full weight of the courts to stifle any competition for longer than we'll be alive. Or, in the case of LLMs, recklessly swing about software they don't understand while praying to find a business model.

Poor billionaire Rowling has no protections against the evil corporations. Everyone using this argument has no clue about artists and and writers. Yes, corporations take a large cut, but creative people welcomed copyright and made the bargain and got fame in the process. Which was always better for them than let Twitch take 70% and be a sharecropper. Silicon Valley middlemen are far worse than the media and music ind…

The individuals who get rich from copyright are a rarity.

Most mid-list authors make very little from copyright. A lot of the "authors" who make a lot of money from writing are celebs who slap their name on a ghost written work.

> Which was always better for them than let Twitch take 70% and be a sharecropper.

Copyright predates Twitch or giant corporations and was designed to protect the profits of the publishers from the start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#196

Post by psychoslave »

627467 wrote: post #137
apatheticonion wrote: post #21

Having over a decade of open source software I've written freely available online, I actually really appreciate the value that AI && LLMs have provided me. The thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the fact that my works were likely included in the training data and, if it doesn't violate my licenses (GNU 2/3), it certainly feels against the spirit of what I intended when distributing my works. I was made redu…

> I was made redundant recently "due to AI" (questionable) and it feels like my works in some way contributed to my redundancy where my works contributed to the profits made by these AI megacorps while I am left a victim. I think anyone here can understand and even share that feeling. And I agree with your "questionable" - its just the lame HR excuse du jour. My 2c: - AI megacorps aren't the only ones gaining, we all…

>But today, language belongs to everyone. We aren't losing code; we are making the ability to code a universal human "literacy."

Literacy require training though. It’s not the same to be able to make voice rendition of a text, understand what the text is about, have a critical analysis toolbox of texts, and having the habit to lookup for situated within a broader inferred context.

Just throwing LLMs into people hands won’t automatically make them able to use it in relevant manner as far as global social benefits can be considered.

The literacy issue is actually quite independent of the fact that LLMs used are distributed or centralised.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#197

Post by dogcomplex »

DesaiAshu wrote: post #58
andoando wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isnt LLM training itself open sourced? With all the compute in the world, something like Folding@home here would be killer

data bandwidth limits distributed training under current architectures. really interesting implications if we can make progress on that

Limits but doesn't prohibit. See https://www.primeintellect.ai/blog/intellect-3 - still useful and can scale enormously. Takes a particular shape and relies heavily on RL, but still big.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#198

Post by graemep »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #173
j_bum wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if the analogy is yours, but the scribe note really struck a chord with me. I’m not a professionally trained SWE (I’m a scientist who does engineering work). LLMs have really accelerated my ability to build, ideate, and understand systems in a way that I could only loosely gain from sometimes grumpy but mostly kind senior engineers in overcrowded chat rooms. The legality of all of this is dubious, though…

Sharing for advancing humanity / benefit of society, and megacorps getting rich off it, is not either-or. On the contrary, megacorps are in part how the benefit to society materializes. After all, it's megacorps that make and distribute the equipment and the software stacks I am using to write code on, that you are using to do your research on, etc. I find the whole line of thinking, "I won't share my stuff because t…

> On the contrary, megacorps are in part how the benefit to society materializes.

That would be true if they were the product of a genuine competitive market.

In fact their strength is in eliminating competition, erecting barriers to entry, manipulating regulation, and maintaining the status quo.

> "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps"

Who is advocating that? People just want everyone to stick to the terms of the licences.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#199

Post by mapcars »

samiv wrote: post #189
apatheticonion wrote: post #21

Having over a decade of open source software I've written freely available online, I actually really appreciate the value that AI && LLMs have provided me. The thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the fact that my works were likely included in the training data and, if it doesn't violate my licenses (GNU 2/3), it certainly feels against the spirit of what I intended when distributing my works. I was made redu…

The other day I was working with some shaders GLSL signed distance field functions. I asked Claude to review the code and it immediately offered to replace some functions with "known solutions". Turns out those functions were basically a verbatim copy of Inigo Quilez's work. His work is available with a permissible license on the Internet but somehow it doesn't seem right that a tool will just regurgitate someone els…

> Pre-LLM world one would at least have had to search for this information, find the site, understand the license and acknowledge who the author is. Post LLM the tool will just blatantly plagiarize someone else work which you can then sign off on as your own

These don't contradict each other though, you could "blatantly plagiarize someone else work" before as well. LLMs just add another layer in between.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#200

Post by gf000 »

sigbottle wrote: post #126
LegionMammal978 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the users would have to maintain their own forks then. I suppose the idea would be, they don't have to maintain it: if it ever starts to rot from whatever environmental changes, then they can just get the LLM to patch it, or at worst, generate it again from scratch. (And personally, I prefer writing code so that it isn't coupled so tightly to the environment or other people's fast-moving libraries to begin with…

The LLM can a priori test on all possible software and hardware environments, test all possible edge cases for deployment, get feedback from millions of eyes on the project explicitly or implicitly via bug reports and usage, find good general case use features given the massive amounts of data gathered through the community of where the project needs to go next, etc? Even in a world with pure LLM coding, it's more li…

Yeah, the funny thing that Linux being open-source is absolutely in line with capitalism. Just look at the list of maintainers - they are almost all paid employees of gigacorps.

It is just an optimization that makes sense -- writing an OS that is compatible with all sorts of hardware is hard, let alone one that is performant, checked for vulnerabilities, etc.

Why would each gigacorp waste a bunch of money on developing their own, when they could just spend a tiny bit to improve a specific area they deeply care about, and benefit from all the other changes financed by other companies.

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