21–30 of 209 posts
I'm using Github to publish my code and seriously I don't care whenever Copilot was trained using it. I published it and in the end somebody can do anything with it without giving a damn about license, copyright etc - that's the truth of open-source.
The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…
For the past ten years we've been spoon fed that it's okay for Open Source / Free Software to be co-opted by giants and subsequently kept private.
You'll be harassed for telling people it's wrong for Apple to lock down the iPhone. Or that Google shouldn't be in charge of web standards.
Web infrastructure is mostly a bunch of black boxes. How far we've fallen! We need a new cloud provider that is 100% on an open stack. Billing system and all.
Richard Stallman is no longer a hero. Yes, he did wrong and gross things, but in the same breath he's brushed under the rug, so are his ideas.
We've all been collectively gaslighted. Wake up.
Downvoters: Tell me how I'm wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software licenses have barely been tested in court, let alone how they apply to code injected and combined with other code via machine learning. You're extremely overconfident about how this will actually play out. For one, just because your code is covered by the GPL, it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable. It has to demonstrate creativity. That's why you don't have to worry about writing fo…
While they are not tested, anything other than accepting the idea kills the idea of software completely. There is lots of room to change details, but somehow copyright and the fact that the code is copied into computer memory needs to be reconciled.
As we're seeing, there's VERY little software where the specific algorithms or ideas in the software are what's valuable. The value comes from the ability to sell a service based on the software and operate it at scale. Like you said, how much SaaS is mostly open source stuff packaged up? Android is (sort of) open source, companies pay lots of people a lot of money to contribute to the Linux kernel where they give away the code they developed with that money, etc etc.
The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…
The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…
Software licenses have barely been tested in court, let alone how they apply to code injected and combined with other code via machine learning. You're extremely overconfident about how this will actually play out. For one, just because your code is covered by the GPL, it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable. It has to demonstrate creativity. That's why you don't have to worry about writing fo…
Then there's private repositories. If they included those in the training data set that's even more actionable.
Personally I think this is software piracy at an absolutely unprecedented scale. Machine learning is just information transfer from the training data into weights in a model, a close relative of lossy data compression. Microsoft is now reselling all its GitHub users' code for profit.
The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…
> The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. For the past ten years we've been spoon fed that it's okay for Open Source / Free Software to be co-opted by giants and subsequently kept private. You'll be harassed for telling people it's wrong for Apple to lock down the iPhone. Or that Google shouldn't be in charge of web standards. Web infrastructure is mostly a bunch of black boxes. How fa…
The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…
> The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. For the past ten years we've been spoon fed that it's okay for Open Source / Free Software to be co-opted by giants and subsequently kept private. You'll be harassed for telling people it's wrong for Apple to lock down the iPhone. Or that Google shouldn't be in charge of web standards. Web infrastructure is mostly a bunch of black boxes. How fa…
His ideas being "brushed under the rug" had nothing to do with his public "cancellation" that happened in the past few years.
Stallman has always been an extreme purist that prioritized his ideological stance over anything else that matters to users. And his ideas were "brushed under the rug" just as much 5 years ago (before public revelations about his misdoings) as they are now. It might just feel like he has been increasingly "brushed under the rug" more recently because he has been becoming increasingly irrelevant and more of just a spokesperson.
The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software licenses have barely been tested in court, let alone how they apply to code injected and combined with other code via machine learning. You're extremely overconfident about how this will actually play out. For one, just because your code is covered by the GPL, it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable. It has to demonstrate creativity. That's why you don't have to worry about writing fo…
What about non-traditional-FOSS licenses? There is a lot of source-available not-OSI-compliant licensed software on GitHub like MongoDB, CockroachDB, etc., and that's clearly proprietary. If this thing is trained on that and generates what amount to snippets of that code then it's clearly violating those licenses. Then there's private repositories. If they included those in the training data set that's even more acti…
This really doesn't give me much comfort though. Making a repo public doesn't imply anything, it could be "All rights reserved".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. The FSF had lawyers from the beginning and always thought (I talked with RMS in the early 80's some) that enforcement was part of the plan.
Sure, but the GPLv2 was very freedom oriented. Enforcement practically was relatively sparse and more educational I thought. Ie, release the TiVo source code, but we don't care that Tivo's are locked down. Is anyone building strong communities on AGPLv3 / GPLv3? I feel the momentum shifted towards Apache / MIT style licenses unfortunately.
While the corporate momentum switched to Apache/MIT licenses, there are strong communities built on AGPLv3/GPLv3.
* Nextcloud - file hosting (AGPLv3)
* Source Hut - git hosting (AGPLv3)
* StreetComplete - OpenStreetMap editing (GPLv3)
* F-Droid - Free Software "app store" for android (GPLv3)
* NewPipe - alternative Youtube frontend (GPLv3)
While these aren't necessarily used by large corporations, their individual communities are thriving and strong.
The shift toward SSPL and Commons Clause licensing is another argument in favor of AGPLv3 licensing. Amazon/Google often won't touch your AGPLv3 code (and you can still sell proprietary licenses to other companies that can't/won't use AGPLv3).