All code must be compatible with GPL-2.0-only
Am I being too pedantic if I point out that it is quite possible for code to be compatible with GPL-2.0 and other licenses at the same time? Or is this a term that is well understood?
AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
11–20 of 464 posts
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#12> All code must be compatible with GPL-2.0-only How can you guarantee that will happen when AI has been trained a world full of multiple licenses and even closed source material without permission of the copyright owners...I confirmed that with several AI's just now.
Wait for court cases I suppose - not really Linus Torvalds' job to guess how they'll rule on the copyright of mere training. Presumably having your AI actually consult codebases with incompatible licenses at runtime is more risky.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
But then if AI output is not under GNU General Public License, how can it become so just because a Linux-developer adds it to the code-base?
If the output is public domain it's fine as I understand it.
Makes sense to me. But so anybody can take Public Domain code and place it under GNU Public License (by dropping it into a Linux source-code file) ?
Surely the person doing so would be responsible for doing so, but are they doing anything wrong?
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#14> All code must be compatible with GPL-2.0-only How can you guarantee that will happen when AI has been trained a world full of multiple licenses and even closed source material without permission of the copyright owners...I confirmed that with several AI's just now.
You take responsibility. That means if the AI messes up, you get punished. No pushing blame onto the stupid computer. If you're not comfortable with that, don't use the AI.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
But then if AI output is not under GNU General Public License, how can it become so just because a Linux-developer adds it to the code-base?
Same as if a regular person did the same. They are responsible for it. If you're using AI, check the code doesn't violate licenses
How could you do that though? You can’t guarantee that there aren’t chunks of copied code that infringes.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#16Glad to see the common-sense rule that only humans can be held accountable for code generated by AI agents.
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Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#17All code must be compatible with GPL-2.0-only Am I being too pedantic if I point out that it is quite possible for code to be compatible with GPL-2.0 and other licenses at the same time? Or is this a term that is well understood?
GPL-2.0-only is the name of a license. One word. It is an alternative to GPL-2.0-or-later.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#18This feels like the OSS community is giving up.
LLMs are lossily-compressed models of code and other text (often mass-scraped despite explicit non-consent) which has licenses almost always requiring attribution and very often other conditions. Just a few weeks ago a SOTA model was shown to reproduce non-trivial amounts of licensed code[0].
The idea of intelligence being emergent from compression is nothing new[1]. The trick here is giving up on completeness and accuracy in favor of a more probabilistic output which
1) reproduces patterns and interpolates between patterns of training data while not always being verbatim copies
2) serves as a heuristic when searching the solution-space which is further guided by deterministic tools such as compilers, linters, etc. - the models themselves quite often generate complete nonsense, including making up non-existent syntax in well-known mainstream languages such as C#.
I strongly object to anthropomorphising text transformers (e.g. "Assisted-by"). It encourages magical thinking even among people who understand how the models operate, let alone the general public.
Just like stealing fractional amounts of money[3] should not be legal, violating the licenses of the training data by reusing fractional amounts from each should not be legal either.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47356000
[1]: http://prize.hutter1.net/
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect
[3]: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14925/has-a-pro...
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#19All code must be compatible with GPL-2.0-only Am I being too pedantic if I point out that it is quite possible for code to be compatible with GPL-2.0 and other licenses at the same time? Or is this a term that is well understood?
You might be being too pedantic :)
https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-2.0-only.html It's a specific GPL license (as opposed to GPL 2.0-later)
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#20> All code must be compatible with GPL-2.0-only How can you guarantee that will happen when AI has been trained a world full of multiple licenses and even closed source material without permission of the copyright owners...I confirmed that with several AI's just now.
You take responsibility. That means if the AI messes up, you get punished. No pushing blame onto the stupid computer. If you're not comfortable with that, don't use the AI.
There’s no reasonable way for you to use AI generated code and guarantee it doesn’t infringe.
The whole use it but if it behaves as expected, it’s your fault is a ridiculous stance.