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Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

codyho.dev

251–260 of 293 posts

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#251

https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1whecn1/comment... > The author was banned from Asahi Linux for hiding his extensive use of LLMs from us in another attempted contribution, and (more importantly) for concealing that he is a former Apple engineer with direct contacts to the people involved in Apple Silicon development. Make of this what you will.

Why would anyone care about either of these things in a negative sense? Isn’t that just saying “he uses modern tools and has subject matter expertise”?

Because the original data the model is trained on is under copyright you can't include the output in a copyleft codebase.

See DCO. You cant sign off on you having permission to license the code when you stole it.

Many open source contributors like copyleft, but with illegal LLM copyright-washing many people disrespect the terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developer_Certificate_of_Origi...

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#252

Damn, I did exactly this already for the M3 and got it working. Was hoping to make a post about it but this kinda scoops it. Bravo!

This article is about the M5 and the A18 Pro so your M3 contributions will be extremely useful!

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#253
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If an LLM reproduces copyrighted material (which is very hard to verify) then the lawsuit from the copyright owner can still sink even robustly funded projects. Do you have many examples of this actually happening that you could share? I really don't see how this issue is going to be feasible for courtrooms to deal with in a world where big tech are bragging about large percentages of all their code being produced…

> Do you have many examples of this actually happening that you could share? If by "this" you mean "an LLM [reproducing] copyrighted material", I have one here [0], with the challenge posed and plagiarized response at [1], found via [2]. One wonders how often the "Don't plagiarize, make no mistakes about this!" instruction fails and the LLMs include nontrivial chunks of other people's work into what they emit. [0] ht…

> If by "this" you mean "an LLM [reproducing] copyrighted material

No. I have absolutely no doubt that happens, and I'm not defending it or encouraging it.

My point is whilst it technically might be illegal and happening all the time, if it's unenforceable or sets a precedence that would severely break the business world, there's every chance nobody would dare bring it to a court room.

I'm not aware of it happening yet (someone trying to enforce copyright on code that was put in production via an LLM) and I would have thought if it did, we would all know about the precedence now.

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They killed Yuzu (a Switch emulator). For the record Yuzu included code for circumventing Nintendo's DRM they had on game carts. It violated the DMCA.

> For the record Yuzu included code for circumventing Nintendo's DRM they had on game carts. It violated the DMCA. It doesn't, this is what Nintendo claimed but it's false. The community learned their lessons from the Wii emulation era and you are supposed to bring your own keys, nothing is included in the emulator. And yes, they also wrote this lie on their DMCA takedown against Suyu (which also doesn't have any key…

>you are supposed to bring your own keys

Just because you have to bring your own keys that doesn't make it not a circumvention measure.

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#255
post #121

Dear fellow humans from "Hacker News". Hacking a driver that in itself documentation to black box Apple hardware is not any different from hacking $10 4G LTE modem. Fact that a person who was not previously driver developer can achieve this in a few weeks is pure wonder. No matter what tools are used. Leave legal questions to Linux Foundation laywers or whoever is responsible to accept or not accept the patches. If A…

AI reverse engineering can be an amazing jumping off point. It's not production ready and someone still has to go over it with a fine tooth comb before it can be called production ready. It is okay to publish things that aren't production ready and they are much better than nothing at all, and we shouldn't harshly criticise the best thing in a category unless we make something better. The difference between AI RE and…

> before it can be called production ready

Define "production ready." Can any driver developed without official specifications, corporate approval, or long-term support plan, ever be properly considered production ready?

At this scale, the only question is if it gets merged upstream. Outside of that it's a "nuh uh, you didn't design it my way."

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#256
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have many examples of this actually happening that you could share? If by "this" you mean "an LLM [reproducing] copyrighted material", I have one here [0], with the challenge posed and plagiarized response at [1], found via [2]. One wonders how often the "Don't plagiarize, make no mistakes about this!" instruction fails and the LLMs include nontrivial chunks of other people's work into what they emit. [0] ht…

> If by "this" you mean "an LLM [reproducing] copyrighted material No. I have absolutely no doubt that happens, and I'm not defending it or encouraging it. My point is whilst it technically might be illegal and happening all the time, if it's unenforceable or sets a precedence that would severely break the business world, there's every chance nobody would dare bring it to a court room. I'm not aware of it happening y…

> ...someone trying to enforce copyright on code that was put in production via an LLM...

AIUI, in the US something that's entirely machine-generated is not eligible for copyright protection. If one could demonstrate that that machine-generated output is plagiarized human work and were rich enough to bring it to court, and able to wait five to ten years for the outcome, I have to believe that the usual copyvio rules would apply because that's not machine-generated output, it's straight-up unauthorized copying performed by a machine.

> My point is whilst it technically might be illegal and happening all the time...

If it's illegal, it's illegal. Refusal to enforce the law doesn't make the action any less illegal. Criminals who get away with their crimes are still criminals. [0]

> ... if it's unenforceable or sets a precedence that would severely break the business world, there's every chance nobody would dare bring it to a court room.

Or the highest court of the land would find a way to misinterpret "related" historical decisions to make the crime retroactively legal, yeah.

> ...I would have thought if it did, we would all know about the precedence now.

I'm not so sure. For one thing, the courts move really slowly when they're not very motivated to address something. For another, news that paints the twin VC darlings and their "industry" as villainous has a tendency to get buried by any one of a billion hype pieces or minor scandals that they have waiting in the wings.

[0] To bystanders who might wish to retort: Yes, I'm very aware that some things that are illegal should not be. I'm also aware that some things that are not illegal very much should be.

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#257
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if this is the case, this is still a valuable contribution to learn upon.

It’s taint. Anyone who looks at it can’t work on a real open source driver because they will have had access to information they’re not supposed to. It won’t be clean room like the stuff Alyssa did.

[deleted]

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#258
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone says this, and then exactly zero cases are cited in support of or against this creative legal theory known as "clean room RE." No statute defines "clean room RE" and there's basically no relevant litigation establishing case law.

It's a defense. It's like having a moat around your castle. You don't need a moat to repel invaders since you also have a wall, and you might not get invaded anyway. There's no law saying you have to do clean room RE. It's legal for me to look at a decompiled driver and write my own driver from scratch. It's not legal for me to just copy the decompilation, and a clean room environment is solid proof that it wasn't co…

> It's a defense.

Who has used it successfully in litigation?

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write software for a living and think we should abolish software copyright, and furthermore, source availability should be a basic consumer protection requirement. Basically the free software definition should be law.

And you don’t think abolishing copyright would impact your career or your ability to feed your family?

[deleted]

Re: Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you don’t think abolishing copyright would impact your career or your ability to feed your family?

Of course I think it would change things. You think I haven't considered that? But I also think society would be a better place if we worked to produce new software that people desire instead of gatekeeping what already exists, and if the law banned this one-sided gatekeeping. The goal of all people should be to build lasting wealth for the next generation to inherit, not to hoard what is naturally infinite. Plumbers…

> I also think society would be a better place if we worked to produce new software that people desire

That's the entire point of copyright -- to incentivize this work by conveying ownership to those who produce such software. Without ownership, others would be free to take it and give you nothing. The world doesn't work for free. I doubt you do, either.

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