Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No right to relicense this project

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 388 posts

Re: No right to relicense this project

#371

Post by amtamt »

hoopyKt wrote: post #369
amtamt wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would say this guy's forked MIT'd version 0 will be as real and valid as version 6 of original chardet. instead of > Your fork of version 6 is just as real and valid as the MIT'd version 7! Supporting for a decade is not a basis for unilateral takeover. In last 3 months there seem to be at least 3 other active contributors, any many dozens in past, who share the copyright on parts (ownership) > nobody is entitled…

You're ignoring the part where the maintainer demonstrated that version 7 isn't a relicense of LGPL work but a complete rewrite based on public domain research and algorithms. That stack overflow article is irrelevant to this situation, and again, versions 6 and before have not been "taken over" they still exist exactly as they did a week ago and are still available to anyone that wants them in full license complianc…

Then we are back to... if this is a complete re-write, why not a new name for new code?

I guess it's futile to argue in this circular logic when full picture is not considered and argument are being put forward only for the sake of winning argument. Have a good $time_of_day.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#372

Post by TruePath »

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #266
antirez wrote: post #116

I believe that Pilgrim here does not understand very well how copyright works: > Their claim that it is a "complete rewrite" is irrelevant, since they had ample exposure to the originally licensed code This is simply not true. The reason why the "clean room" concept exists is precisely since actually the law recognizes that independent implementations ARE possibile. The "clean room" thing is a trick to make the litig…

Regardless of the legal interpretations, I think it's very worrying if an automated AI rewrite of GPLed code (or any code for that matter) could somehow be used to circumvent the original license. That kinda takes out the one stick the open source community has to force soulless multinationals to contribute back to the open source projects they use.

If the AI is good enough to truly implement the whole thing to a similar level of reliability without copying it then who cares. At that point you should be able to decompile any program you want and find enough information inside that an AI can go write a similar quality program from the vague information about the call graph. We've transcended copyright in computer code.

If it can't and it costs a bunch of money to clean it up then same as always.

OTOH if what is actually happening is just that it is rewording the existing code so it looks different then it is still going to run afoul of copyright. You can't just rewrite harry potter with different words.

Note that even with Google vs oracle it was important they didn't need the actual code just the headers to get the function calls were enough. Yes it's true that the clean room isn't required but when you have an AI and you can show that it can't do it a second time without looking at the source (not just function declarations) that's pretty strong evidence.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#373

Post by [deleted] »

TruePath wrote: post #372
maybewhenthesun wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the legal interpretations, I think it's very worrying if an automated AI rewrite of GPLed code (or any code for that matter) could somehow be used to circumvent the original license. That kinda takes out the one stick the open source community has to force soulless multinationals to contribute back to the open source projects they use.

If the AI is good enough to truly implement the whole thing to a similar level of reliability without copying it then who cares. At that point you should be able to decompile any program you want and find enough information inside that an AI can go write a similar quality program from the vague information about the call graph. We've transcended copyright in computer code. If it can't and it costs a bunch of money to…

[deleted]

Re: No right to relicense this project

#374

Post by TZubiri »

senko wrote: post #210
TZubiri wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok sure, in the alternative, here's the argument: The AI was trained with the code, so the complete rewrite is tainted and not a clean room. I can't believe this would need spelling out.

Reread the parent: clean room is not required.

Oh, got it.

Parent was making a claim about clean room not being required, without making claims about whether LLM coding is or isn't clean room.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#375

Post by pas »

nmfisher wrote: post #322
rao-v wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m genuinely surprised to see this not discussed more by the FOSS community. There are so many ways to blow past the GPL now: 1. File by file rewrite by AI (“change functions and vars a bit”) 2. One LLM writes a diff language (or pseudo code) version of each function that a diff LLM translates back into code and tests for input/output parity The real danger is that this becomes increasingly undetectable in closed so…

I’ve never delved fully into IP law, but wouldn’t these be considered derivative works? They’re basically just reimplementing exactly the same functionality with slightly different names? This would be different from the “API reimplementation” (see Google vs Oracle) because in that case, they’re not reusing implementation details, just the external contract.

there's usually a test for originality, and it involves asking things (from the jury) like, is it transformative enough?

so if someone tells the LLM to write it in WASM and also make it much faster and use it in a different commercial sector... then maybe

since 2023 the standard is much higher (arguably it was placed too low in 1993)

Re: No right to relicense this project

#376

Post by dmurvihill »

simiones wrote: post #246
antirez wrote: post #116

I believe that Pilgrim here does not understand very well how copyright works: > Their claim that it is a "complete rewrite" is irrelevant, since they had ample exposure to the originally licensed code This is simply not true. The reason why the "clean room" concept exists is precisely since actually the law recognizes that independent implementations ARE possibile. The "clean room" thing is a trick to make the litig…

I think this is a bit too broad. There are actually three possible cases. When there is similar code, the only defense possible to prove that you have not copied the original is to show that your process is a clean room re-implementation. If the code is completely different, then clean room or not is indeed irrelevant. The only way the author can claim that you violated their copyright despite no apparent similarity…

The burden of proof is completely uncharted when it comes to LLMs. Burden of proof is assigned by court precedent, not the Copyright Act itself (in US law). Meaning, a court looking at a case like this could (should) see the use of an LLM trained on the copyrighted work as a distinguishing factor that shifts the burden to the defense. As a matter of public policy, it's not great if infringers can use the poor accountability properties of LLMs to hide from the consequences of illegally redistributing copyrighted works.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#377

Post by dragonwriter »

spwa4 wrote: post #357
dragonwriter wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're saying LLMs don't count as an original work and so have zero copyright protection? No, I'm saying that your explanation of what makes something a derivative work is wrong. Now, personally, I think there is a very good argument that LLMs and similar models, if they have a copyright at all, do so only because of whatever copyright can be claimed on the training set as a work of its own (which, if ti exists,…

Your first 3-4 arguments I just read as trying to weasel out from under the GPL. Because everyone trains on GPL code and if the GPL applies to the result ... well clearly you know the implications of that. And btw: that a "compilation copyright" would apply to training data. Great. That only means, of course, that if they are publish their training data (like they agreed to when using GPL code to base their models on…

> Your first 3-4 arguments I just read as trying to weasel out from under the GPL.

I haven't talked about any license, or given any though to any particular license in any of this; I don't know where you are reading anything about the GPL specifically into it.

None of this has anything to do with the GPL, except that the GPL only is even necessary where there is something to license because of a prohibition on copyright law.

> nd btw: that a "compilation copyright" would apply to training data. Great. That only means, of course, that if they are publish their training data (like they agreed to when using GPL code to base their models on), people can't republish the exact same collection under different conditions (BUT they can under the same conditions).

No, that's not what it means, and I don't know where you got the "other terms" or the dependency on publication from; neither is from copyright law.

> But the models were created by violating ToS of webservers!

And, so what?

To the extent those terms are binding (more likely the case for sites where there is affirmative assent to the conditions, like ones that are gated on accounts with a signup process that requires agreeing to the ToS, e.g., “clickwrap”), there are remedies. For those where the conditions are not legally binding (more like the case where the terms are linked but there is no access gating, clear notice, or affirmative assent), well, they aren't binding.

> Btw: what model training is doing, obviously, is distilling from the work, from the brain, of humans, against the will of those humans, and without paying for it. So in any reasonable inteUhrpretation, that's also a ToS violation.

Uh, what? We are just creating imaginary new categories of intellectual property and imaginary terms of service and imaginary bases for those terms to be enforceable now?

Re: No right to relicense this project

#378

Post by ineedasername »

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #266
antirez wrote: post #116

I believe that Pilgrim here does not understand very well how copyright works: > Their claim that it is a "complete rewrite" is irrelevant, since they had ample exposure to the originally licensed code This is simply not true. The reason why the "clean room" concept exists is precisely since actually the law recognizes that independent implementations ARE possibile. The "clean room" thing is a trick to make the litig…

Regardless of the legal interpretations, I think it's very worrying if an automated AI rewrite of GPLed code (or any code for that matter) could somehow be used to circumvent the original license. That kinda takes out the one stick the open source community has to force soulless multinationals to contribute back to the open source projects they use.

It’s less worry to me given that a year ago this would have been exceptionally harder to do, requiring a lot more time and effort and been more costly. A year from now it will be even easier. All of this means that one aspect of the mission that brought about the need for a license like this is now fundamentally easier whether or not the license is used. There can be less worry about software locked up in closed source overall.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#379

Post by pas »

sumtechguy wrote: post #211
jmyeet wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a subtext in your point that I want to expand on. Tech people, particularly engineers, tend to make a fundamental error when dealing with the law that almost always causes them to make wrong conclusions. And that error is that they look for technical compliance when so much of the law is subjective and holistic . An example I like to use is people who do something illegal on the Internet and then use the argu…

> So, when this gets to a court (which it will, it's not a question of "if"), the court will consider how necessary the source work was to what you did. If you used it for a direct translation (eg from C++ to Go) then you're going to lose. My prediction is that even using it in training data will be cause for a copyright claim. This has a lot of similarity to when colorization of film started popping up. Did colorizi…

it's going to be fun when the same LLM output in one jurisdiction will be a new original work whereas in a different one it will be a derivative one

(This is/was already the case with software patents for US and EU, right?)

Re: No right to relicense this project

#380

Post by pas »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #203
p_l wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Taint" requires that the code is demonstratably derivative from the *GPL licensed work. This is actually harder standard than some people think. The absolute clean room approaches in USA are there because they help short circuit a long lawsuit where a bigger corp can drag forever until you're broken.

It's harder than some people think, but the author does a lot of the work when he names the resulting artifact "chardet v7.0.0". If I thought I was writing the kind of arms-length reimplementation that's required, I would never put it into the versioning scheme of the original, come on.

it can be API compatible and legally original

not to mention that it's not a complete copy, because it has different behavior (the better performance)

but of course we have to check the code too

Post reply on HN