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Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

blog.gitbutler.com

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Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#301

Post by 20k »

rcxdude wrote: post #268
philipportner wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure you can prompt a full, accurate, copy of a nontrivial codebase out of them. Even with zero temperature their accuracy is just not that high. Granted, these are some of the most widely spread texts, and not codebases, but just fyi: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.02671 > For Claude 3.7 Sonnet, we were able to extract four whole books near-verbatim, including two books under copyright in the U.S.: Harry Potte…

That paper is basically using the LLM as a compression algorithm: it's prompting with some section of the book and it's reprompting if it doesn't give the right output. Notably this only works if you already have a copy of the book in question!

Distributed a compressed copy of something is still copyright infringement

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#302

Post by boomlinde »

schacon wrote: post #121
ewy1 wrote: post #37

pretty dystopian to ask a robot to recreate your favorite software just so you can relicense it for your business venture

We're choosing a license that is usable by the entire community. Our goal is a linkable library, which makes GPL impossible. If we had chosen to go with LGPL or GPL with linking exception (like libgit2), it would have the same issue of changing the license, so we went with whatever was the most permissive so everyone could use it for anything if they wish. This has nothing to do with business - I hope I can get the p…

> We clearly learned from how Git does operations and emulated it in order to function interoperably

So you didn't just let an AI go nuts with access to the source code of Git so as to produce a derivative work?

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#303

Post by bcjdjsndon »

20k wrote: post #293
bcjdjsndon wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is there's a lot more than a single repo in training data, the corpus is massive... Should the author of a blog post on cats also be compensated for simply being in the same training data as the git repo?

Honestly? Yes. This is why its such a problem that most of the training data was not used with permission, and without the correct copyright status or license associated with it There's a lot of arguments about humans doing the same thing, but the reality is that humans and robots don't enjoy the same legal protection. Its clearly a derivative work of all of its training data

> Honestly? Yes.

Then it works both ways. Say I manage to generate essentially a ripoff of your copyrighted song, release it and make a ton of money, you now have to split that royalty with keyboard cat. And Joe bloggs. You'd end up fractions of pennies

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#304

Post by schacon »

ssddanbrown wrote: post #288
schacon wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's lots of really interesting opinions here from a lot of armchair lawyers. To clarify, my stance on this is that the reimplementation did not copy protected expressions (Jplag reports less than 1.8% max similarity between the codebases), it's done in good faith, and it's what's best for the broader Git ecosystem (assuming Grit even becomes usable, which it's currently not purported to be). From a copyrigh…

> Many of the main authors of the Git source code are friends of mine and I have no intention to steal anything from anyone, only to make their great ideas more broadly useful. By working-around/subverting the terms they provided their contributions under? While you claim to be doing this in good faith, and state "it's what's best for the broader Git ecosystem", that's all based on your own opinion which appears to i…

> Would you be happy for someone to do the same with the GitButler source code?

Honestly, that would be pretty awesome. We would be flattered.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#305

Post by schacon »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #258
bryanlarsen wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original git had a command line interface. It's widely assumed that using a GPL'd program in your program through the command line does not cause the GPL to "infect" your program. OTOH, one of the major reasons for grit is to provide a library interface. If they kept it GPL, anything that used grit through the library interface would have to also become GPL. This could be the "legitimate concern" you're asking fo…

I mean, yes, clearly, LGPL is the explicitly obvious answer here. And they rejected it.

Relicensing under any other license, including the LGPL, is exactly the same thing. Either the reimplementation copies protected expression, in which case it would be required to be GPL-2.0-only, or it does not, in which case we can choose the most fitting license.

If you believe that using an MIT license is not correct, then you defacto also believe that using an LGPL license is not correct.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#307

Post by bryanlarsen »

schacon wrote: post #305
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yes, clearly, LGPL is the explicitly obvious answer here. And they rejected it.

Relicensing under any other license, including the LGPL, is exactly the same thing. Either the reimplementation copies protected expression, in which case it would be required to be GPL-2.0-only, or it does not, in which case we can choose the most fitting license. If you believe that using an MIT license is not correct, then you defacto also believe that using an LGPL license is not correct.

The OP you're referring to made a distinction between legally and morally correct. Legally, you appear superficially correct, but I'm not a lawyer, and neither was the OP. Morally, the LGPL is correct.

Judges are human and will take into account good faith and attempts to maintain the spirit of the license. Choosing the LGPL signals a desire to maintain the spirit of the license. The MIT signals bad faith. Judges don't like that.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#308

Post by rcxdude »

20k wrote: post #301
rcxdude wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That paper is basically using the LLM as a compression algorithm: it's prompting with some section of the book and it's reprompting if it doesn't give the right output. Notably this only works if you already have a copy of the book in question!

Distributed a compressed copy of something is still copyright infringement

You misunderstand my point: the LLM is not a losslessly compressed version of the text: you need to supply additional information from the original in order to 'extract' it from the LLM (and from that point of view, the extra information would be the compressed form).

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#309

Post by keybored »

schacon wrote: post #210
Philpax wrote: post #11

> In looking at the code that the LLMs have produced for the project, especially given the pretty massive and widespread architectural changes needed to make the implementation libified and memory safe, we decided that the codebase is not a derivative work that would require carrying forward the GPL license and have decided to release the code under the MIT instead. Hmm. That's going to be interesting.

Well, there's lots of really interesting opinions here from a lot of armchair lawyers. To clarify, my stance on this is that the reimplementation did not copy protected expressions (Jplag reports less than 1.8% max similarity between the codebases), it's done in good faith, and it's what's best for the broader Git ecosystem (assuming Grit even becomes usable, which it's currently not purported to be). From a copyrigh…

Are you a trained lawyer? Okay but presumably not practicing in the last twenty years.

You know that all contributions to the Git project has to be signed off as either being made by yourself or being handed over by someone who has signed off on that certficate of origin. For everyone on every change. Even the lead developers so to speak. And you spend some thousands of dollars and run an AI analyis tool to wash your hands?

Who are you to do that? Oh wait I forgot, you are Mr. Chacon. A hand in everything Git and friendly with everyone in Git who matters for twenty years. Remind us next time as well so I don’t forget.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#310

Post by uecker »

kstenerud wrote: post #148
ianm218 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perspective is that it is good to have a beta in a lot of directions. No one really knows what the endgame of software security looks like. So some people should try the port to rust angle, some should focus on hardening the C, some should explore more exotic options like formally provable languages etc

You won't get anywhere pressing your case here. This group has already found you guilty, and no argument will change their minds. You've been caricatured into a blind AI-follower rust-rewriter-just-because type, and that's the surface they'll continually attack (you're wasting time, hurting the community, v2-itis, bikeshedding, premature optimization, copyright violation, moustache-twirling-evil-intent-rug-pull-later…

There was no caricature as a "AI follower" etc. I gave my arguments you didn't.
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