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GCC steering committee announces AI policy

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Re: GCC steering committee announces AI policy

#81

Post by marginalia_nu »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #65
marginalia_nu wrote: post #58

Makes sense. The G in GCC is for GNU right, GNU as in Stallman-style Free Software. The GPL operates based on copyright licenses. If LLM output can not be copyrightable (as the courts seem to assert), then it can not be a significant part of Free Software.

courts assert LLM can't HOLD copyright, as in it is not an entity that can own something and go to court over such ownership nothing is said about you the user holding copyright over result of tool use

That is to the extent of my understanding, not correct. At least in the EU,

"Given this framework, it follows that purely AI-generated outputs—those created automatically by an AI system without substantial human intervention—are not eligible for copyright protection in the EU. Such outputs are considered to fall into the public domain, making them freely available for anyone to use, reproduce, or adapt without seeking permission or providing attribution. The legal and commercial implications of this are significant. For creators and companies investing in AI systems that generate music, art, or text, there is no proprietary right over the final output unless a human has contributed in a way that meets the “intellectual creation” standard."

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2025/7740...

The courts are AFAICT still undecided in the US regarding this.

Re: GCC steering committee announces AI policy

#82

Post by Cthulhu_ »

sensanaty wrote: post #57

Why do the AI bros even care? Surely you can just make a better gcc with a prompt right, why care about one project disallowing your Thoughtful Contributions?

There was someone claiming they had already AI generated a better GCC that was 10x as fast. A bold claim, but they didn't provide evidence so who knows.

Re: GCC steering committee announces AI policy

#83

Post by dijksterhuis »

user43928 wrote: post #59
Retr0id wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there also a concern that an LLM may reproduce copyrighted code verbatim (or close enough), and the original author asserts their copyright?

To my knowledge there is not a single known case where this happened. News back then were about intentionally prompting to output known copyrighted material. The parent comment still stands in my opinion: When, despite millions of developers using agentic AI already, are these lawsuits supposed to manifest?

> To my knowledge there is not a single known case where this happened.

> News back then were about intentionally prompting to output known copyrighted material.

First, there are other cases if you take the time to dig. This is quite an old example (GPT-2) as i haven't kept up to date on this field recently, but it does show that this problem has been known about since before these systems were widely adopted: https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.07805 [0]

Second, GP said nothing about the type of effort required to make it happen, just that it can be done and that the copyright owner could come along and cause legal problems later. It's absolutely possible to have a fly-by contributor who purposefully asks for code that reproduces X/Y/Z without a maintainer knowing about it.

But then the maintainer is the one in legal trouble.

> When, despite millions of developers using agentic AI already, are these lawsuits supposed to manifest?

Legal / copyright / etc. cases often take a lot longer than a couple of years to come to fruition.

---

[0]: edit -- to clarify this is an example of the reproduction problem, not an example copyright infringement case.

Re: GCC steering committee announces AI policy

#84

Post by panzi »

Retr0id wrote: post #27
olalonde wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's correct though. You would need 3 extremely low probability events to all occur simultaneously for the concern to actually manifest. 1) Courts reverse their previous decisions and declare LLM generated code as belonging to LLM labs. 2) LLM labs decide to assert their copyright and sue open source projects. 3) They are able to prove that the code was generated by an LLM and not just any LLM but their LLM.

Isn't there also a concern that an LLM may reproduce copyrighted code verbatim (or close enough), and the original author asserts their copyright?

Not just when it reproduces code. Since fair use doesn't exist like that in a lot of countries the question is if the training itself is a violation. Are there e.g. EU or Japanese rulings on that?

Re: GCC steering committee announces AI policy

#85

Post by duskdozer »

sensanaty wrote: post #57

Why do the AI bros even care? Surely you can just make a better gcc with a prompt right, why care about one project disallowing your Thoughtful Contributions?

They're just extremely concerned about the wellbeing of the developers who will be left behind in the dust.

Re: GCC steering committee announces AI policy

#86

Post by Cthulhu_ »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #26

how do enforce 'human only code' anyway ???? at some point, what's stopping people from lying or make the code like human writing one ????

Nothing, but nothing did before LLMs became a thing. The test lies in whether the submitter can explain the code they submitted, and more importantly, the why.

Re: GCC steering committee announces AI policy

#87

Post by Supermancho »

incognito124 wrote: post #80

> The true purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill without allowing skill to access wealth. This is such a fire quote

This could be said of any technology or financial instrument. I can understand why someone would think this is fire, if they just discovered fire.

Re: GCC steering committee announces AI policy

#88

Post by newswasboring »

cge wrote: post #71

Without wanting to take a stance on either side of these arguments, it does occur to me that, for this and other major FOSS projects deciding on AI policies, others can always start forks with different policies. The success or failure of such forks might even offer some insight into how helpful or harmful different forms of AI use are, at least from a programming perspective.

I'm waiting on this exact this to happen. Even in major projects there are AI proponents. They can start a fork for many reasons, experimentation, frustration or to try out an ambitious idea. It will take a bunch of time but we will get a very good insight into how much AI usage actually helps software development.
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