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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

#191

Post by lelanthran »

schacon wrote: post #165
GreenDolphinSys wrote: post #162

This is simply plagiarism of GPL-licensed code, and license-washing as well. I can understand working backwards from a test suite, but this literally just reads the original source: https://github.com/gitbutlerapp/grit/blob/main/AGENTS.md#sou... LLM users seem to live in another world where stealing everything that isn't bolted down, and passing it off as their own work, is acceptable.

I see it differently. I look at it as if I had written this code myself, using this same approach. Look at the docs, look at the tests, look at the source, implement something that is interactively compatible but a very different approach. For example, this is exactly what I did when I tried to get SSH commit signing working properly in GitButler: https://blog.gitbutler.com/signing-commits-in-git-explained You can se…

> You have to read the source. Which means that libgit2 and Gitoxide and every other Git reimplementation is also "license-washing" per this definition because they also had to reference the Git source to see what the technical specification is.

This makes no sense:

1. A court might agree with you if a human read the sources, then wrote a new implementation. Doesn't apply to trade secrets (i.e. cleanroom implementations), but certainly for copyright.

2. A court is not going to agree that passing the original sources through a machine means you own the results!

I mean, that's what it comes down to - as far as the courts are concerned, passing copyright stuff through a machine results in the output retaining the original copyright. Passing copyright material through a person is not so clear cut.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#192

Post by [deleted] »

anilgulecha wrote: post #180
jbotz wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A translation of a book to a different language is a derivative work. So a translation of a computer program to a different programming language is also. But if in the translation of the book you start altering the plot and the personalities of that characters, does it at some point become not a derivative work? What point? IANAL, and I have no real idea, but I imagine that point has been probed significantly in case…

> translation. It's not technically a translation, it's a re-implementation, with test suites acting as the destination. If it was a file by file translation your argument would have been valid.

[deleted]

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#193

Post by spwa4 »

jbotz wrote: post #166
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.

A translation of a book to a different language is a derivative work. So a translation of a computer program to a different programming language is also. But if in the translation of the book you start altering the plot and the personalities of that characters, does it at some point become not a derivative work? What point? IANAL, and I have no real idea, but I imagine that point has been probed significantly in case…

Yes, but as soon as copyright became a problem for very rich people parts of it were cancelled.

1) re-implementation for compatibility (which was quickly "reestablished" through use of copyright-protecting encryption. In other words: do you get to write software that connects to MS/Apple/Google/Facebook servers without authorization from those companies? Yes. Do you get to copy an encryption key from their software to make it possible? No)

and, more recently,

2) violating copyright for LLM training

and, currently mostly attempted:

3) "uncopyrighting" run software through an LLM, and some people "believe" it comes out with your copyright on it! Because very rich people want to sell uncopyrighting.

Ie. the jury's still out what will happen when it's billionnaire vs billionnaire.

Of course, the question is what happens the second someone does this with a disney movie, or a big microsoft application ...

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#194

Post by 20k »

anilgulecha wrote: post #180
jbotz wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A translation of a book to a different language is a derivative work. So a translation of a computer program to a different programming language is also. But if in the translation of the book you start altering the plot and the personalities of that characters, does it at some point become not a derivative work? What point? IANAL, and I have no real idea, but I imagine that point has been probed significantly in case…

> translation. It's not technically a translation, it's a re-implementation, with test suites acting as the destination. If it was a file by file translation your argument would have been valid.

Git is part of the LLM's training set though, so simply asking it to recreate git in another language is pretty equivalent. Like, you can almost certainly get these LLMs to output gits full source code with some prompting, so there's not that much difference (as much as we like to pretend that AI generated code has no copyright implications)

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#195

Post by 20k »

asp_hornet wrote: post #189
GreenDolphinSys wrote: post #162

This is simply plagiarism of GPL-licensed code, and license-washing as well. I can understand working backwards from a test suite, but this literally just reads the original source: https://github.com/gitbutlerapp/grit/blob/main/AGENTS.md#sou... LLM users seem to live in another world where stealing everything that isn't bolted down, and passing it off as their own work, is acceptable.

It’s all a bit voodoo to me but wouldn't the entire original source code be in the training data also?

Yes, and LLMs have been shown to store and be able to output their training data, so this is at best very sketchy

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#196

Post by lelanthran »

heyts wrote: post #6

I'd be really interested in the opposite, just for the sake of experimentation since that's what these projects mostly are. They all seem to be rewrites for the sake of "performance", because the cost is now lower bc of AI. I'd be interested to see something like a port of Quake III in Python or Kubernetes in Perl, even Rails in Python would be goofy and really fun to see

> They all seem to be rewrites for the sake of "performance", because the cost is now lower bc of AI.

If that was true they'd use the original license. They are not. The whole RiiR movement is very obviously switching away from a pro-user license (GPL).

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#197

Post by lelanthran »

schacon wrote: post #103
Ferret7446 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not for performance, it's for Rust. If the first stereotype of Rust programmers is announcing that a project is in Rust before any other desirable software property (e.g. stable, performant, etc), the second stereotype is that Rust programmers love rewriting stuff in Rust, just for the sake of Rust. (The 2.a. corollary is that they love rewriting GPL projects specifically and downgrading them to MIT/Apache)

It's not for Rust, it's for Library. Well, it's sort of for Rust. GitButler is written in Rust and Jujutsu is written in Rust and we're both depending on fork/exec'ing to an unknown Git binary with no linkable library and no control over the subprocess to do a range of networking stuff. Neither Gitoxide or libgit2 are capable of this either, as much as I love and support those projects. This project is entirely about…

> It's not for Rust, it's for Library.

Prove it - put it under GPL, like the original sources you ingested were.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#198

Post by gspr »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #190
gspr wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm terrified that this somehow seems acceptable to a large group of people. I'm baffled that other IP holders (say those who own valuable pieces of proprietary software, or music, or movies, or even the LLMs themselves) don't think leopards will come eat their faces next. This erosion of IP has to stop, or anyone who does any intellectual work will be absolutely screwed. If that only meant FOSS people, I'd be worrie…

I might even be fine with the loss of IP if everyone lost it.

How does intellectual work happen (beyond doing it for leisure) in a world without IP?

In a utopian world of abundance where we could all be the independently wealthy nobles of the 18th and 19th century who did intellectual work for fun: great. In the world of today where people need to be compensated for their work: what happens?

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#199

Post by lelanthran »

schacon wrote: post #105
Aperocky wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Added it in full. It still squarely falls under "this is for fun/are you seriously doing this for this purpose" territory for me. git operate on the filesystem level, the unix behavior is just getting buried. You cannot rewrite git into a linkable library and decide it's now not unix. It's entire behavior is unix, which is why it's awesome.

My intent with this project is not to replace Git in any way. I don't care about the CLI part of this project. The point is to provide a feature-complete reentrant linkable library. Even if it's an ugly and slow one, this is still the only one thing that exists that covers those points - Gitoxide and libgit2 are both awesome but they are not feature complete.

> The point is to provide a feature-complete reentrant linkable library.

If that was the goal, why change the license?

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