"If you distribute modified code, or offer it as a networked service, you must make the source available under the same terms. This is not a restriction on sharing. It is a condition placed on sharing: if you share, you must share in kind."
-- This is, on any plain reading, a restriction on sharing. "You can share only under these conditions" is plainly more restrictive than "sure do whatever you want". You can argue that it's a restriction that ultimately leads to more sharing overall. But it is a restriction on sharing in any given case of sharing nevertheless.
Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
351–360 of 623 posts
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#352> Antirez does not address this directional difference. He invokes the GNU precedent, but that precedent is a counterexample to his conclusion, not a supporting one.
Morally - yes, technically - no. I think it's odd to be mad at someone doing the exact thing you praise in another case just because license isn't copyleft within license allowance. Make a better copyleft license?
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#353> If source code can now be generated from a specification, the specification is where the essential intellectual content of a GPL project resides. Our foreparents fought for the right to implement works-a-like to corporate software packages, even if the so-called owners did not like it. We're ready to throw it all away, and let intellectual property owners get so much more control. The implications will not end up b…
>Our foreparents fought for the right to implement works-a-like to corporate software packages, even if the so-called owners did not like it Our "foreparents" weren't competing with corporations with unlimited access to generative AI trained on their work . The times, they're-a-changin'. You're rehashing the argument made in one of the articles which this piece criticizes and directly addresses, while ignoring the en…
I agree with the comment and find the linked article motivated reasoning at best. It's easy to find something "morally good" when it aligns with what you wanted. But plenty of people at Oracle, at IBM, at Microsoft, at Nintendo, at Sony and plenty of other companies whose moats have been commoditized by open source knockoffs don't find such happenings to be "morally good". And even if in general you think that "more freedom" justifies these sorts of unauthorized clones, then Oracle V. Google was at best a lateral move, as Java was hardly a closed ecosystem. One also wonders how far the idea of "more freedom" = "good" goes. How does (did if Qualcom's recent acquisition changes the position) the author feel about the various chinese knockoff clones of the Arduino boards and systems? Undeniably they were a financial good for hobbyists and the maker world alike, and they were well within the "legal" limits, and certainly they "opened" the ecosystem more. But were they "good"? Was the fact that they competed and undersold Arduino's work without contributing anything back and making it harder financially for Arduino to continue their work a "moral good"?
If "more freedom" is your goal, then this rewrite is inherently in that direction. It didn't "close" the old library down. The LGPL version remains under its license, for anyone to use and redistribute exactly as it always has. There is just now also an alternative that one can exercise different rights with. And that doesn't even get into the fact that "increased freedom" was never a condition of being allowed to clone a system from its interfaces in the first place. It might have been a fig leaf, but some major events in the legal landscape of all this came from closed reimplementations. Sony v. Connectix is arguably the defining case for dealing with cloning from public interfaces and behavior as it applies to emulators of all kinds, and Connectix Virtual Gamestation was very much NOT an open source or free product.
But to go a step further, the larger idea of AI assisted re-writes being "good", even if the human developers may have seen the original code seems to broadly increase freedoms overall. Imagine how much faster WINE development can go now that everyone that has seen any Microsoft source code can just direct Claude to implement an API. Retro gaming and the emulation scene is sure to see a boost from people pointing AIs at ay tests in source leaks and letting them go to town. No our "foreparents" weren't competing with corporations with unlimited access to AI trained on their work, they were competing with corporations with unlimited access to the real hardware and schematics and specifications. The playing field has always been un-level which was why fighting for the right to re-implement what you can see with your own eyes and measure with your own instruments was so important. And with the right AI tools, scrappy and small teams of developers can compete on that playing field in a way that previous developers could only dream of.
So no, I agree with the comment that you're responding to. The incredible mad dash to suddenly find strong IP rights very very important now that it's the open source community's turn to see their work commoditized and used in ways they don't approve of is off-putting and in my opinion a dangerous road to tread that will hand back years of hard fought battles in an attempt to stop the tides. In the end it will leave all of us in a weaker position while solidifying the hold large corporations have on IP in ways we will regret in the years to come.
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#354> Blanchard's account is that he never looked at the existing source code directly. He fed only the API and the test suite to Claude and asked it to reimplement the library from scratch.
I don't see how it matters what he looked at. If I took a copyrighted code and run it through a script that replaces all variable names, and then claimed copyright on the result because it's an entirely new work and I did not look on the original work, I'd be ridiculed and sued, and would lose that lawsuit. AI is a more complex machine, but still a machine. If you feed somebody'd work into a machine, what comes out is a derivative work.
Test suite is a part of copyrighted code, is it not? If he used just the API description, preferably from a copyright-clean source, then we could claim new work (regardless of how it was produced, by using Claude or trained pigeons or by consuming magic mushrooms). But once parts of the copyrighted code had been used, it becomes derivative work.
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#355"If you distribute modified code, or offer it as a networked service, you must make the source available under the same terms. This is not a restriction on sharing. It is a condition placed on sharing: if you share, you must share in kind." -- This is, on any plain reading, a restriction on sharing. "You can share only under these conditions" is plainly more restrictive than "sure do whatever you want". You can argue…
I guess because our freedom is not unlimited.
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#356Someone should put this to the test. Take the recently leaked Minecraft source code and have Copilot build an exact replica in another programming language and then publish it as open source. See if Microsoft believes AI is copyright infringement or not.
As described, this would not be the same thing. If the AI is looking at the source and effectively porting it, that is likely infringement. The idea instead should be "implement Minecraft from scratch" but with behavior, graphics, etc. identical. Note that you'll need to have an AI generate assets or something since you can't just reuse textures and models.
"Behavior, graphics, etc." would likely constitute separate IP from the code. I am not sure there's a model that allows you to make AI reproduce Minecraft without telling it what "Minecraft" is - which would likely contaminate it with IP-protected information.
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the whole Adobe pdf thing and the whole Microsoft word thing. And the whole ibm pc thing. Imagine if we were forced to keep using ibm from when they lost their way until now simply because anti-ai luddites were able to scare monger
I would wager that the vast majority of people commenting here about the pitfalls of AI, especially as it relates to governance and laws, are heavy users of AI, recognize the import and value it brings, and find ways to utilize it more themselves, so not sure using an ad-hominem dismissal of very valid objections are going to be effective. (side bar: the phrase "anti- luddites" is way, way overused, especially here.…
HN comments on LLM agents are bi-modal now, as are views in the general population. The modes are adopters and non-adopters.
There isn’t much of a middle ground anymore.
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#358The really interesting question to me is if this transcends copyright and unravels the whole concept of intellectual property. Because all of it is premised on an assumption that creativity is "hard". But LLMs are not just writing software, they are rapidly being engineered to operate completely generally as knowledge creation engines: solving math proofs, designing drugs, etc. So: once it's not "hard" any more, does…
Creativity is still hard. AI-generated content is called "slop" for a reason ;-)
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#359The really interesting question to me is if this transcends copyright and unravels the whole concept of intellectual property. Because all of it is premised on an assumption that creativity is "hard". But LLMs are not just writing software, they are rapidly being engineered to operate completely generally as knowledge creation engines: solving math proofs, designing drugs, etc. So: once it's not "hard" any more, does…
Copyright is about originality and expression, not effort. US copyright law does not use "Sweat of the Brow" doctrine.