191–200 of 203 posts
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We will need ... software patents!
No, lawyers will want software patents as that's the only group that would benefit from them, apart from large litigation-happy companies that want to squash any competition.
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No, lawyers will want software patents as that's the only group that would benefit from them, apart from large litigation-happy companies that want to squash any competition.
Not sure I can follow your reasoning. Wouldn't the developer of the software who got a patent for an invention embodied in the software she developed benefit as well?
The bigger issue is patent abuse - file or buy a few poorly specified patents and then use them along with litigation to shut down competitors. This generally leads to bolstering the bigger companies at the expense of smaller companies due to the costs of litigation.
Basically, software patents can turn developing software into a minefield. It can end up that only people with access to legal departments will be able to sell software.
> I personally think all of this is exciting. I’m a strong supporter of putting things in the open with as little license enforcement as possible. I think society is better off when we share, and I consider the GPL to run against that spirit by restricting what can be done with it. I like sharing too but could permissive only licenses not backfire? GPL emerged in an era where proprietary software ruled and companies…
Ronacher has a startup Earendil that markets itself as a non-profit like OpenAI. He appears with Austrian OpenClaw people. He is totally in on AI and that quote of his is self-serving. Can't we go back to flaming Unicode in Python?
they are arguments against any licence not just LGPL, I could literally plagiarise all his work, claim it's mine "clean-room" and not give him as much as a mention, by his own logic
and in his own words, he's "not interested" about the morality of it
odd
It also just feels a little nefarious. There isn't much reason to change between those licenses in question beyond to allow it to be more tightly integrated into something commercial and closed-source. In which case, having an LLM write a compatible rewrite _in a new project_ seems reasonable at the current moment in time. It's this intentional overriding of the original intentions, seemingly _for profit_ as well, that is the grossest part, because the alternatives are just so easy and common.
I think the reimplementation in question rubs people the wrong way because of the intentions of parties on both ends and the ignoring of one of them by the other (erasure of, from some POV). The original author of the code obviously chose the license they did intentionally (copyleft "keep it open" reasons, seemingly). And the the rewrite author has their intentions as well (unknown beyond "less restrictions on deriva…
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I’m not saying it’s the only force. But if it wasn’t instrumental what’s your take on the cause of proprietary software dominating until relatively recently?
You certainly made the case that the GPL was the only force, or at least ignored the contribution of alternative licenses. I also wouldn't agree that proprietary software is in decline. There are niches where the OS, mobile apps, and games are almost entirely proprietary (and that is not changing any time soon). But the most damning problem is that all computer hardware now has multiple layers of subsystems with prop…
Nope.
> For me personally, what is more interesting is that we might not even be able to copyright these creations at all. A court still might rule that all AI-generated code is in the public domain, because there was not enough human input in it. That’s quite possible, though probably not very likely. As I understand it, the US Supreme Court has just this week ruled exactly this. LLM output cannot be copyrighted, so the o…
> And if it can't be copyrighted that means it is in the public domain from the instant it was created and can't be licensed. I don't think this follows? If I vibe code something and never post it anywhere public, I can still license that code to a company and ask them to pay me for using the code? So as a corollary, the business model of providing software where you can choose either free (as in beer) and restrictiv…
There might be a path to this business model via Trade Secrets (you register your source code as a Trade Secret, and sell only binaries).
And, of course, you can still sell support as the paid-for service, which has worked for a lot of people.
> For me personally, what is more interesting is that we might not even be able to copyright these creations at all. A court still might rule that all AI-generated code is in the public domain, because there was not enough human input in it. That’s quite possible, though probably not very likely. As I understand it, the US Supreme Court has just this week ruled exactly this. LLM output cannot be copyrighted, so the o…
Technically how will vibe code be identified? And how does one determine the level of human involvement that would make code copyrightable? What of the prompts? Are those copyrightable? What about the architectural and tactical design of the code if I do those myself? I don't vibe code; I am firmly in charge of the architecture and code style of my projects, and i frequently give detailed instructions to AI tools I u…
I can see there's going to be some huge court fights over this in the next ten years - there's no way some of the big media companies are going to be OK with their content being public domain, and no way are they going to just miss out on being able to produce it so cheaply with an LLM.
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Copyright is positive law created by humans, not natural law that we happen to recognize. The idea that adopted legislation or established caselaw can be wrong about what copyright fundamentally is makes no sense.
Not what I'm saying - if you meet the technical, intentional definition of a process, substantiated by precedent, then the law should support any variation of the process which has those same technical features meeting the definition. Using AI as a tool to produce output, no matter how complex the underlying tool, should result in the authorship of the output being assigned to the user of the tool. If autocorrect in…
How long they will agree this in the face of large media companies' lobbying efforts remains to be seen.
> For me personally, what is more interesting is that we might not even be able to copyright these creations at all. A court still might rule that all AI-generated code is in the public domain, because there was not enough human input in it. That’s quite possible, though probably not very likely. As I understand it, the US Supreme Court has just this week ruled exactly this. LLM output cannot be copyrighted, so the o…
> As I understand it, the US Supreme Court has just this week ruled exactly this. LLM output cannot be copyrighted, so the only part of any piece of software that can be copyrighted is that part that was created by a human. Your understanding is incorrect. The case was about whether an LLM can be an author, and did not whether the person using it can be (which will be the case). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…
https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/03/its-a-trap-2/
Quoting from that post:
> At the core of the dispute is a bedrock of copyright law: that copyright is for humans, and humans alone. In legal/technical terms, "copyright inheres at the moment of fixation of a work of human creativity."