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Coding agents could make free software matter again

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Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#221

Post by oblio »

eru wrote: post #167
input_sh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem like the type of person that will believe anything as long as someone cites a case without looking into it. Bartz v Anthropic only looked at books, and there was still a 1.5 billion settlement that Anthropic paid out because it got those books from LibGen / Anna's Archive, and the ruling also said that the data has to be acquired "legitimately". Whether data acquired from a licence that specifically forbids…

As long as they don't distribute the model's weights, even a strict interpretation of the GPL should be fine. Same reason Google doesn't have to upstream changes to the Linux kernel they only deploy in-house.

But LLMs do distribute the derived code they generate outside of their company. That's their entire point.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#222

Post by oblio »

graemep wrote: post #195
As1287 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor billionaire Rowling has no protections against the evil corporations. Everyone using this argument has no clue about artists and and writers. Yes, corporations take a large cut, but creative people welcomed copyright and made the bargain and got fame in the process. Which was always better for them than let Twitch take 70% and be a sharecropper. Silicon Valley middlemen are far worse than the media and music ind…

The individuals who get rich from copyright are a rarity. Most mid-list authors make very little from copyright. A lot of the "authors" who make a lot of money from writing are celebs who slap their name on a ghost written work. > Which was always better for them than let Twitch take 70% and be a sharecropper. Copyright predates Twitch or giant corporations and was designed to protect the profits of the publishers fr…

Giant corporations started in the early 1600s and back then they had gunboats :-p

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#223

Post by oblio »

627467 wrote: post #137
apatheticonion wrote: post #21

Having over a decade of open source software I've written freely available online, I actually really appreciate the value that AI && LLMs have provided me. The thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the fact that my works were likely included in the training data and, if it doesn't violate my licenses (GNU 2/3), it certainly feels against the spirit of what I intended when distributing my works. I was made redu…

> I was made redundant recently "due to AI" (questionable) and it feels like my works in some way contributed to my redundancy where my works contributed to the profits made by these AI megacorps while I am left a victim. I think anyone here can understand and even share that feeling. And I agree with your "questionable" - its just the lame HR excuse du jour. My 2c: - AI megacorps aren't the only ones gaining, we all…

Once creation is commodotized, controlling eye balls is king. Look up aggregators. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.

If anything, in Extremistan we're all useless. Platforms and whales are all that matters.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#224

Post by ozim »

mapcars wrote: post #199
samiv wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other day I was working with some shaders GLSL signed distance field functions. I asked Claude to review the code and it immediately offered to replace some functions with "known solutions". Turns out those functions were basically a verbatim copy of Inigo Quilez's work. His work is available with a permissible license on the Internet but somehow it doesn't seem right that a tool will just regurgitate someone els…

> Pre-LLM world one would at least have had to search for this information, find the site, understand the license and acknowledge who the author is. Post LLM the tool will just blatantly plagiarize someone else work which you can then sign off on as your own These don't contradict each other though, you could "blatantly plagiarize someone else work" before as well. LLMs just add another layer in between.

Biggest problem is that AI companies are middlemen profiting from theft.

If you steal once or twice that’s bad and that’s on you maybe you will get away with it maybe not.

If you make it on scale and take cut from distribution of stolen goods that’s where normally you have doors kicked out at 6am.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#225

Post by luma »

davemp wrote: post #216
mr_toad wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Broadly speaking, GPL is a license that has specific provisions about creating derivative software from the licensed work, and just saying "fair use" doesn't exempt you from those provisions. Broadly speaking, yes it does. The whole point of fair use is that you don’t need a license.

Claiming LLMs are fair use is ridiculous bordering on ignorant or disingenuous. Here’s the 4 part test from 17 U.S.C. § 107: 1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; Fail. The use is to make trillions of dollars and be maximally disruptive. 2. the nature of the copyrighted work; Fail. In many cases at least, the copy writte…

You’re mixing up “using” with “copying”. You are allowed to “use” all of a book or movie or code by listening to or watching or reviewing the whole thing. Copyright protects copies. The legal claim here is than training an LLM is sufficiently transformative such that it cannot be construed as a copy.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#226

Post by dabedee »

This is an interesting take. I think a critical missing piece from this article is how the use of coding agents will essentially enable the circumvention of copyleft licenses. Some project that was recently posted on HN is already selling this service [1][2]. It rewrites code/modules/projects to less restrictive licenses with no legal enforcement mechanisms. It's the opposite of freeing code.

[1] Malus.sh ; Initially a joke but, in the end, not. You can actually pay for their service.

[2] Your new code is delivered under the MalusCorp-0 License—a proprietary-friendly license with zero attribution requirements, zero copyleft, and zero obligations.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#227

Post by graemep »

oblio wrote: post #222
graemep wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individuals who get rich from copyright are a rarity. Most mid-list authors make very little from copyright. A lot of the "authors" who make a lot of money from writing are celebs who slap their name on a ghost written work. > Which was always better for them than let Twitch take 70% and be a sharecropper. Copyright predates Twitch or giant corporations and was designed to protect the profits of the publishers fr…

Giant corporations started in the early 1600s and back then they had gunboats :-p

there were very few of them though. They constitute a far larger proportion of the economy now.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#228

Post by graemep »

lstodd wrote: post #220
graemep wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individuals who get rich from copyright are a rarity. Most mid-list authors make very little from copyright. A lot of the "authors" who make a lot of money from writing are celebs who slap their name on a ghost written work. > Which was always better for them than let Twitch take 70% and be a sharecropper. Copyright predates Twitch or giant corporations and was designed to protect the profits of the publishers fr…

This is so, but note that publishers were the "giant corporations" of the time. In this nothing changed. Authors never were and still are not the point of copyright/IP.

Comparatively big for the time, but very small compared to publishing companies how.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#229

Post by bmitch3020 »

This article misses the point completely. Open source isn't great because it's easy to extract value from it. Open source is great because of the people creating value with it.

Value isn't just slapping a license on something and pushing to GitHub. It's maintaining and curating that software over years, focusing the development towards a goal. It's as much telling users what features you're not willing to add and maintain as it is extending the project to interoperate with others.

And that long term commitment to maintenance hasn't come out of the vibe coded ecosystem. Commitment is exactly what they don't want, rather they want the fast sugar high before they drop it and move on to the next thing.

The biggest threat to open source is the strip mining of the entire ecosystem, destroying communities and practices that have made it thrive for decades. In the past, open source didn't win because it always had the best implementation, but because it was good enough to solve problems for enough people that it became self sustaining from the contribution of value.

I feel that will continue, but it's also going to take a set back from those that aren't interested in contributing value back into the ecosystem from which they have extracted so much.

Re: Coding agents could make free software matter again

#230

Post by hojeongna »

i've learned a lot from open source, and i'm building open source myself. so individually? yeah this stings a bit. but zooming out to the ecosystem level — i think there's still something genuinely positive happening here. the knowledge compounds, even if the credit doesn't.

(luckily my projects are unpopular enough that nobody bothered training on them lol)

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