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Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

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Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#101

Post by hn_acc1 »

Gormo wrote: post #77
Xirdus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both would resolve to the same question, no? Yes but my answer would be different. It can be either about what coding agents do (and you'll see that it breaks the social contract), or it can be about what the FOSS social contract is (and you'll argue that coding agents don't break it.) Lo and behold, it was the latter. > There seems to be an implicit premise here that any work generated by an LLM whose training dat…

> But if a specific work was generated based on a specific open source work, then according to the social contract that binds non-AI code generators such as transpilers, the output is derivative and should follow the license of that open source work. I don't disagree with the premise that any LLM that is cloning code wholesale from a third-party repo is creating a derivative work, and the license terms apply to it. B…

>If I build a Markov chain based on a statistical analysis of word sequences in Hamlet, and then use it to produce a new sentence that isn't found in the text of that work, I have not created a derivative work of Hamlet under any applicable sense of that term.

If you write "To see or not to see, that is the question" about a person named Eyelet, who is going blind, how can you argue that it is NOT derivative of / borrowed from Hamlet? Yet that sentence is not in the work. Isn't that what LLMs essentially do? Tokenize, then substitute in new values for certain tokens, while retaining the general structure?

Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#102

Post by rspeele »

Gormo wrote: post #96
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Literal CTRL+C, CTRL+V" is the only thing copyright has ever applied to This is extremely false. Copyright additionally grants you exclusive control over the production and distribution of derivative works. A "derivative work" is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, ab…

> This is extremely false. Copyright additionally grants you exclusive control over the production and distribution of derivative works. A derivative work is a work that itself includes copyrighted content from the original work. That is to say that for something to be a derivative work, some measure of its content must be "CTRL-C, CTRL-V" from the originating work. Something that's merely inspired by another work, o…

> A derivative work is a work that itself includes copyrighted content from the original work.

If you put a GPL C program through Emscripten to run in a browser the output doesn't include the original C code but it's surely a derivative work.

> Someone who looks at a dozen code examples in public repos to learn how to do e.g. a quick sort, then upon understanding the logic flow of the quick sort algorithm, writes his own quick sort implementation is not creating a derivative work of the code in the repos he exampled. And the way LLMs work is much more similar to that process than to the "compressed anthology" concept you're describing.

This is undoubtedly the core of the disagreement. Humans can learn from what they have seen, appreciate it, understand it, and draw on that experience in what they create. They do this without being considered ripoff artists, so why not machines that simulate the "same" thing automatically?

To me the answer is simply that humans are special. Human thought and human effort makes it creativity when a human does it, copying when a machine does it. It's a double standard I am perfectly willing to accept. I am unabashedly biased in this regard.

That may seem remarkably unfair to the machines, or like a cop-out. I just carved out a hardcoded special case for humans, and my whole philosophical reasoning is "because I said so". But how fair do we want to be? After all, if you want to treat a machine exactly like a human who learns from prior art to create new art, then the ownership of the new art would also belong to the machine. Not to the person who prompts it.

Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#103

Post by Gormo »

davisp wrote: post #95
Gormo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if a specific work was generated based on a specific open source work, then according to the social contract that binds non-AI code generators such as transpilers, the output is derivative and should follow the license of that open source work. I don't disagree with the premise that any LLM that is cloning code wholesale from a third-party repo is creating a derivative work, and the license terms apply to it. B…

> If I build a Markov chain based on a statistical analysis of word sequences in Hamlet, and then use it to produce a new sentence that isn't found in the text of that work, I have not created a derivative work of Hamlet under any applicable sense of that term. Uh, that is exactly what a derivative work is. You literally specify that Hamlet is an input to your work. I believe you're conflating derivative with transfo…

> Uh, that is exactly what a derivative work is.

No, it isn't. A derivative work isn't something based on extracting underlying ideas or patterns from another work, it's something that includes copyrighted portions of the other work.

An annotated edition of Hamlet is a derivative work. A Cliff's Notes summary of Hamlet is a derivative work.

Strange Brew and The Lion King are not derivative works of Hamlet simply because they include literary themes and plot points that originated in Hamlet. A list of word counts of popular works of literature that includes an entry for Hamlet is also not a derivative work. The Markov chain described above is not a derivative work.

> The obvious follow up here is whether an LLM is creating transformative derivations or not. A lot of folks argue that yes, an LLM spitting out statistically sampled code that matches existing code is not transformative and is (or might be) infringing the terms of the license it was released under.

And I would agree with them. An LLM that actually is outputting non-trivial code that matches a public project's code verbatim is engaging in copying, and not stochastic inference.

> I think it's a pretty obvious "somewhere in the middle" that is gonna make a bunch of lawyers a whole lot of money.

It's a shame that the same fundamental questions have to be relitigated over and over again just because the contextual formalities and modes of expression have changed. I wonder how many of the legal cases are going to be copies or derivative works of previous ones.

Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#104

Post by Gormo »

lelanthran wrote: post #83
Gormo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I really can't comprehend these sentiments as anything other than an "I don't like AI" argument. FOSS has always been about just writing code and putting it out into the world where others can do as they please with it. I see a lot of risks involved in people surrendering their own decision-making to LLMs, but that's a question of how they're used, not how they're trained. The idea that using FOSS software to t…

> FOSS has always been about just writing code and putting it out into the world where others can do as they please with it. That is wrong. How can you write that with a straight face? There are projects that are put into the public domain (one major one comes to mind), but the clear majority of FOSS projects have strings attached which make the intention of the authors absolutely clear. IOW, if you're not happy with…

I mean, the most restrictive license, the GPL, was conceived specifically to protect the "four freedoms" and prevent subsequent modifications from violating them. The "copyleft" concept was specifically designed to create an ecosystem that behaved as if copyright didn't apply in the first place.

I don't know how you can imply with a straight face that it did anything else.

I don't know how you can possibly argue that non-redistributive usage of software could ever violate the GPL -- and the other common FOSS licenses don't even have the copyleft provision, and literally are saying "do whatever you want, but I'm not responsible".

Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#105

Post by vitally3643 »

Rochus wrote: post #94
ergonaught wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL, unlike the BSD and such, intends to prevent the closing of distributed derivative works. LLMs trained on GPL code can produce derivative works without any enforcement mechanism. You may be fine with that, but the GPL is not a public domain license, and LLM training treats all things as if they were public domain.

> LLMs trained on GPL code can produce derivative works This confuses two completely separate things. GPL governs distribution of derivative works. An LLM trained on GPL code does not distribute that code. The model weights are not a copy, a derivative, or a distribution of the training data in any legally recognizable sense; "influenced by" is not "derived from". The enforcement argument is a non sequitur; the GPL h…

> An LLM trained on GPL code does not distribute that code.

You can't simply make that assertion. You'll have to prove that LLMs do not actually contain encoded copies of copyrighted code and that they are incapable of reproducing such code verbatim.

There is no evidence for such a claim, and so your entire argument is completely baseless.

Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#106

Post by Rochus »

vitally3643 wrote: post #105
Rochus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs trained on GPL code can produce derivative works This confuses two completely separate things. GPL governs distribution of derivative works. An LLM trained on GPL code does not distribute that code. The model weights are not a copy, a derivative, or a distribution of the training data in any legally recognizable sense; "influenced by" is not "derived from". The enforcement argument is a non sequitur; the GPL h…

> An LLM trained on GPL code does not distribute that code. You can't simply make that assertion. You'll have to prove that LLMs do not actually contain encoded copies of copyrighted code and that they are incapable of reproducing such code verbatim. There is no evidence for such a claim, and so your entire argument is completely baseless.

> You'll have to prove that LLMs do not actually contain encoded copies

In law, the presumption is that an act is lawful unless proven otherwise. The burden lies on whoever claims a violation occurred. I already went into the case of sufficiently similar reproduction in my previous response.

Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#107

Post by garaetjjte »

kator wrote: post #3

> Yet, this shift made me re-evaluate the open source code publishing. Prior to that, I have been positive about free and open software, and considered this to be the default mode for work such as kefir. I did not require any justifications from myself to publish something. Now, however, I feel more and more that the main beneficiaries of my unpaid work are companies scraping the internet to train large language mode…

Incredibly rich to complain about LLM scraping with LLM generated article.

Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#108

Post by LtWorf »

Rochus wrote: post #106
vitally3643 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An LLM trained on GPL code does not distribute that code. You can't simply make that assertion. You'll have to prove that LLMs do not actually contain encoded copies of copyrighted code and that they are incapable of reproducing such code verbatim. There is no evidence for such a claim, and so your entire argument is completely baseless.

> You'll have to prove that LLMs do not actually contain encoded copies In law, the presumption is that an act is lawful unless proven otherwise. The burden lies on whoever claims a violation occurred. I already went into the case of sufficiently similar reproduction in my previous response.

I mean… it's been common knowledge for a while that they do in fact contain the original data.

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/oc9qj1/copilot...

You can disagree all you want, but there's ample evidence of this.

Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#109

Post by LtWorf »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #14
bjourne wrote: post #13

People taking your work and not giving anything back was ALWAYS the risk you took when writing free software. LLM training doesn't change that much. That the us military no doubt is using gcc to compile embedded software for their icbm:s no doubt irks the gnu people. But you can't have it any other way. "You can only use my software for good things" just is not consistent with "free software".

There's an almost intergalactic level of irony in the extent to which open source has benefited giant corporations and the military at the expense of individuals, and ultimately contributed to the commercialised enclosure of software IP. I suppose you could argue it also indirectly led to the empowerment of non-developers to create their own vibe coded solutions. But we're not quite there yet. And the AI IP that make…

> it also indirectly led to the empowerment of non-developers to create their own vibe coded solutions.

Nobody is empowered to do that because the models to do that aren't free.

Re: Cessation of public development of Kefir C compiler

#110

Post by Rochus »

LtWorf wrote: post #108
Rochus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'll have to prove that LLMs do not actually contain encoded copies In law, the presumption is that an act is lawful unless proven otherwise. The burden lies on whoever claims a violation occurred. I already went into the case of sufficiently similar reproduction in my previous response.

I mean… it's been common knowledge for a while that they do in fact contain the original data. https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/oc9qj1/copilot... You can disagree all you want, but there's ample evidence of this.

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