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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

#251

Post by lrvick »

martin-t wrote: post #225
lrvick wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Companies have been encrypting code to HSMs for decades. Never stopped humans from reverse engineering so it certainly will not stop AI aided by humans able to connect a Bus Pirate on the right board traces. Anything that executes on the CPU can be dumped with enough effort, and once dumped it can be decompiled.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#252

Post by Marha01 »

dwedge wrote: post #250
Marha01 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So is music free now? Uhm... yes? The cost of downloading pirated music is essentially zero. The only reason why people use services like Spotify is because it's extremely cheap while being a bit more convenient. But jack up the price and the masses will move to sail the sea again.

The cost of stealing has always been essentially zero. Same argument can be made for streaming, and yet Netflix is neither cheap nor struggling for subscribers.

> The cost of stealing has always been essentially zero.

That is not necessarily true, depending on the level of enforcement and the availability of opportunities to steal.

> Same argument can be made for streaming, and yet Netflix is neither cheap nor struggling for subscribers.

Netflix is still pretty cheap for the convenience it provides. Again, jack up the price and see the masses move to torrent movies/shows again.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#253

Post by lrvick »

dwedge wrote: post #234
lrvick wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So is music free now? The record industry doesn't exist anymore, isn't ridiculously profitable? Artists are finally earning a fair share?

Music is free, because music piracy is unenforceable so the law is irrelevant. Now, I personally buy most of my music on vinyl because I want to support artists, but absolutely nothing forces me to do that as all the music is available for free.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#254

Post by LtWorf »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #191
Sharlin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious that a computer program cannot have copyright because computer programs are not persons in any currently existing jurisdiction. Whether a person can claim copyright of the output of a computer program is generally understood as depending on whether there was sufficient creative effort from said person, and it doesn't really matter whether the program is Photoshop or ChatGPT.

So if creative effort was put into writing the prompt, then whoever wrote the prompt should have the copyright to the output produced by ChatGPT?

Sure, but the prompt wasn't the only input… there was considerable effort put into the training data as well :)

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#255

Post by LtWorf »

cinntaile wrote: post #203
goatlover wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they against change in general, or certain kinds of change? Remember when social media was seen as near universal good kind of progress? Not so much now.

Social media has never been seen as a universal positive force? It's the same with AI. It has good and bad aspects as does any technology that has an impact on this scale, AI will arguably have a much bigger impact imo. People are generally against change that forces them to change the way they used to do things. I'm sure most will have their reasons why they are against this particular change, but I don't think it w…

> Social media has never been seen as a universal positive force?

You missed the whole arab spring thing?

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#256

Post by LtWorf »

nitwit005 wrote: post #100
SirHumphrey wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot of companies use and release AI written code, are they all liable?

Yep, and honestly it's going to come up with things other than lawsuits. I've worked at a company that was asked as part of a merger to scan for code copied from open source. That ended up being a major issue for the merger. People had copied various C headers around in odd places, and indeed stolen an odd bit of telnet code. We had to go clean it up.

Headers are normally fine. GPL license recognises that you might need them to read binary files.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#257

Post by lrvick »

martin-t wrote: post #220
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".

I don't think modified by a human is enough. If you take licensed text (code or otherwise) and manually replace every word with a synonym, it does not remove the license. If you manually change every loop into a map/filter, it does not remove the license. I don't think any amount of mechanical transformation, regardless if done by a human or machine erases it. There's a threshold where you modify it enough, it is no…

You only need to feed the docs and tests to an LLM to get a "clean room" re-implementation that can then be relicensed.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#258

Post by pawelmurias »

aruametello wrote: post #80
shevy-java wrote: post #24

Fork the kernel! Humans for humans! Don't let skynet win!!!

> Fork the kernel! pre "clanker-linux". I am more intrigued by the inevitable Linux distro that will refuse any code that has AI contributions in it.

Tardux Linux

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#259

Post by [deleted] »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #164
kam wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being in the public domain is not a license; rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed. Practically speaking, though, if a work is in the public domain, it might as well have an all-permissive non-copyleft free software license. Public domain material is compatible with the GNU GPL. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#PublicDomain

Yes, if it is clearly labeled as such, than GPL/LGPL licenced works may be included in such products. However, this relationship cannot make such works GPL without violating copyright, and doesn't magically become yours to re-license isomorphic plagiarized code from LLM. For example, one may use NASA public domain photos as you wish, but cannot register copyright under another license you find convenient to sue peopl…

[deleted]

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#260

Post by Muromec »

martin-t wrote: post #225
lrvick wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I spend a fun week during Christmas figuring out some really obfuscated bibary code with antidebugging anti pampering things in a cryptographic context. I didn’t use ghydra or ida or anything beyond gdb with deepseek chat in a browser. That low effort got me what I needed to get.
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