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AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

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Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#221

Post by martin-t »

shakna wrote: post #215
Luker88 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just remember that "reviewed" is not enough to not be considered public domain. It needs to be modified by a human. No amount of prompting counts, and you can only copyright the modified parts. Any license on "100% vibecoded" projects can be safely ignored. I expect litigations in a few years where people argue about how much they can steal and relicense "since it was vibecoded anyway".

For those who might wonder how accurate this is, there is advice from the Federal Register to this effect. [0] Its quite comprehensive, and covers pretty much every question that might be asked about "What about...?" > In these cases, copyright will only protect the human-authored aspects of the work, which are “independent of” and do “not affect” the copyright status of the AI-generated material itself. [0] https://…

I cannot take seriously any politician or layer using the words "artificial intelligence", especially to models from 2023. These people have never used LLMs to write code. They'd know even current models need constant babysitting or they produce unmaintainable mess, calling anything from 2023 AI is a joke. As the AI proponents keep saying, you have to try the latest model, so anything 2 years old is irrelevant.

There's really 2 ways to argue this:

- Either AI exists and then it's something new and the laws protecting human creativity and work clearly could not have taken it into account and need to be updated.

- Or AI doesn't exist, LLMs are nothing more than lossily compressed models violating the licenses of the training data, their probabilistically decompressed output is violating the licenses as well and the LLM companies and anyone using them will be punished.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#222

Post by lrvick »

Luker88 wrote: post #216
lrvick wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile I expect that intellectual property protections for software are completely unenforceable and effectively useless now. If something does not exist as MIT, an LLM will create it. The playing field is level now, and corpo moats no longer exist. I happily take that trade.

Isn't the "corpo moat" bigger now? They can wash the copyright by AI training, but the AIs don't get trained on closed source. "corpo" also has a ton of patents, which still can't be AI-washed. What will become unenforceable are Open Source Licenses exclusively, how does that make it a "level field"?

Because AI is also proving to be very good at reverse engineering proprietary binaries or just straight up cloning software from test suites or user interfaces. Cuts both ways.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#223

Post by martin-t »

Luker88 wrote: post #216
lrvick wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile I expect that intellectual property protections for software are completely unenforceable and effectively useless now. If something does not exist as MIT, an LLM will create it. The playing field is level now, and corpo moats no longer exist. I happily take that trade.

Isn't the "corpo moat" bigger now? They can wash the copyright by AI training, but the AIs don't get trained on closed source. "corpo" also has a ton of patents, which still can't be AI-washed. What will become unenforceable are Open Source Licenses exclusively, how does that make it a "level field"?

Exactly.

AI proponents completely ignore the disparity of resources available to an individual and a corporation. If I and a company of 1000 people create the same product and compete for customers, the company's version will win. Every single time. Or maybe at least 1000:1 if you're an optimist.

They have access to more money for advertising, they have an already established network of existing customers, they have legal and marketing experts on payroll. Or just look at Microsoft, they don't even need advertising, they just install their product by default and nobody will even hear about mine.

Not to mention as you said, the training advances only goes from open source to closed source, not the other way around.

AI proponents who talk about "democratization" are nuts, it would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#224

Post by lrvick »

adrianN wrote: post #218
lrvick wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile I expect that intellectual property protections for software are completely unenforceable and effectively useless now. If something does not exist as MIT, an LLM will create it. The playing field is level now, and corpo moats no longer exist. I happily take that trade.

The corporate moat is the army of lawyers they have. It doesn’t matter whether they win or not if you can’t afford endless litigation. Is the same for patents.

The music industry has an army of lawyers too, and it did not make a damn bit of difference once bittorrent was popularized.

IP law means nothing once tens of millions of people are openly violating it.

The software industry is about to learn this lesson too.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#225

Post by martin-t »

lrvick wrote: post #222
Luker88 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the "corpo moat" bigger now? They can wash the copyright by AI training, but the AIs don't get trained on closed source. "corpo" also has a ton of patents, which still can't be AI-washed. What will become unenforceable are Open Source Licenses exclusively, how does that make it a "level field"?

Because AI is also proving to be very good at reverse engineering proprietary binaries or just straight up cloning software from test suites or user interfaces. Cuts both ways.

Have you ever seen what obfuscation looks like when somebody puts the effort in?

Not to mention companies will try to mandate hardware decryption keys so the binary is encrypted and your AI never even gets to analyze the code which actually runs.

It's not sci-fi, it's a natural extension of DRM.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#226

Post by VorpalWay »

Luker88 wrote: post #205
lrvick wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cannot be understated how religiously opposed many in the Linux community are to even a single AI assisted commit landing in the kernel no matter how well reviewed. Plenty see Torvalds as a traitor for this policy and will never contribute again if any clearly labeled AI generated code is actually allowed to merge.

Just remember that "reviewed" is not enough to not be considered public domain. It needs to be modified by a human. No amount of prompting counts, and you can only copyright the modified parts. Any license on "100% vibecoded" projects can be safely ignored. I expect litigations in a few years where people argue about how much they can steal and relicense "since it was vibecoded anyway".

> Any license on "100% vibecoded" projects can be safely ignored.

As far as I know that has only been decided in US so far, which is far from the whole world.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#227

Post by IsTom »

VorpalWay wrote: post #226
Luker88 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just remember that "reviewed" is not enough to not be considered public domain. It needs to be modified by a human. No amount of prompting counts, and you can only copyright the modified parts. Any license on "100% vibecoded" projects can be safely ignored. I expect litigations in a few years where people argue about how much they can steal and relicense "since it was vibecoded anyway".

> Any license on "100% vibecoded" projects can be safely ignored. As far as I know that has only been decided in US so far, which is far from the whole world.

In Poland law is similar in this regard, so I'd assume at least some other countries do this as well.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#228

Post by jcelerier »

streetfighter64 wrote: post #58
philipov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think it's an unacceptable risk to use a tool you can't trust when your own head is on the line, you're right, and you shouldn't use it. You don't have to guarantee anything. You just have to accept punishment.

Yeah, but that's not a useful thing to do because not everybody thinks about that or considers it a problem. If somebody's careless and contributes copyrighted code, that's a problem for linux too, not only the author. For comparison, you wouldn't say, "you're free to use a pair of dice to decide what material to build the bridge out of, as long as you take responsibility if it falls down", because then of course som…

> Preventing the problem from the beginning is better than ensuring you have somebody to blame for the problem when it happens.

that's assuming that the problems and incentives are the same for everyone. Someone whose uncle happens to own a bridge repair company would absolutely be incentivized to say

> "you're free to use a pair of dice to decide what material to build the bridge out of, as long as you take responsibility if it falls down"

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#229

Post by sourcegrift »

senko wrote: post #196
ninjagoo wrote: post #79

> Signed-Off ... > The human submitter is responsible for: > Reviewing all AI-generated code > Ensuring compliance with licensing requirements > Adding their own Signed-off-by tag to certify the DCO > Taking full responsibility for the contribution > Attribution: ... Contributions should include an Assisted-by tag in the following format: Responsibility assigned to where it should lie. Expected no less from Torvalds,…

> Expected no less from Torvalds This was written by Sasha Levin referencing a Linux maintainers’ discussion.

Of all the documents, this one needed a proper attribution with link to meeting minutes

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#230

Post by globular-toast »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #6

This is discussed in the Linus vs Linus interview, "Building the PERFECT Linux PC with Linus Torvalds". [0] [0] https://youtu.be/mfv0V1SxbNA?si=CBnnesr4nCJLuB9D&t=2003

Hardly "discussed", perhaps "mentioned". Sebastian is basically an entertainer who can plug things in to sockets.
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