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John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

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Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#391

Post by tejohnso »

OSaMaBiNLoGiN wrote: post #4

I think one of the more prominent issues folks take with mass training on OSS is that the companies doing it are now profiting for having done it. In his follow-up post he talks about him open sourcing old games as a gift, and he doesn't much care how people receive that gift, just that they do. He doesn't acknowledge that Anthropic, OpenAI, etc, are profiting while the original authors are not. The original authors…

> profiting for having done it.

Isn't that permitted by some of the more popular licences? If you care about others profiting from your work you'd choose an appropriate licence. And then you'd temper your expectations and hope for the best because you know there will be less than perfect compliance. It's like lending money to family or friends. You can hope they pay you back, but better to consider it a gift because there's a good chance they won't.

Is it worse because it's AI for some reason? I'm having trouble pinning down exactly what the gripe is. Is it license compliance? Is it AI specific? Is it some notion about uncool behavior in what some people see as a community?

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#392

Post by shdh »

imiric wrote: post #82

Thinking of open source as a gift is such a strange take. It implies that the relationship is merely a transaction where the giftee is the beneficiary and the gifter is a philanthropist. It has subtle financial undertones, and a sense that gifters are somehow morally superior. It is far healthier to see it as a collaboration. The author publishes the software with freedoms that allow anyone to not only use the softwa…

It was certainly a gift to anyone who was able to fork those games and continue their maintenance

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#393

Post by spacecrafter3d »

ineedasername wrote: post #355
aeonfox wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More succinctly, Carmack only contributes his code to OSS, but not his time , and shouldn't impose his values on the wider community that contribute both. > technically correct, but in context I think that's somewhat beside the point Talking past people to argue on semantics and pedantry is a HN pastime. It may even be it's primary function.

>“Primary” function If that was the intent don’t you think it would be stated somewhere, or in the faq? > “Talking” past It’s only text, there’s no talking past. You can’t talk past someone when the conversation isn’t spoken. At best, you might ignore what they write and go on and on and on at some length on your own point instead, ever meandering further from the words you didn’t read, widening the scope of the orig…

I lol'd.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#394

Post by bruce511 »

tonyarkles wrote: post #345
nickff wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'bazaar' system is a wonderful methodology, but there is a place for the 'cathedral', and it is no less open source.

SQLite being a prime example of cathedral-style development that few would argue isn’t open source.

Ok, I'll bite.

SQLite is not Open Source, it is Public Domain. Which, I'd argue alas, is "better" than Open Source.

It is fair to say that the distinction to most people is inconsequential. Nevertheless they are different legal paradigms.

Free Software, and to a lesser extent, Open Source, impose restrictions which are not present in Pubic Domain software.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#395

Post by jhatemyjob »

shdh wrote: post #389
jhatemyjob wrote: post #45

> those were to allay fears of my partners to allow me to make the gift I respect Carmack so much more now. I always scratched my head why he made Quake GPL. It was such a waste. Now it doesn't matter anymore. I so thankful copyleft is finally losing its teeth. It served its purpose 30 years ago, we don't need it anymore.

Corporate lawyers for id wanted GPL iirc

that's more or less what carmack said in the tweet in the OP, no?

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#396

Post by BarryMilo »

aeonfox wrote: post #338
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and Bigstrat2003 are arguing a technicality, and you're technically correct, but in context I think that's somewhat beside the point. Skrebbel and Layer8 are focused on the cultural associations of "open source" development, and this mismatch is causing everyone to talk past each other. The original post in this thread was: > This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a li…

More succinctly, Carmack only contributes his code to OSS, but not his time , and shouldn't impose his values on the wider community that contribute both. > technically correct, but in context I think that's somewhat beside the point Talking past people to argue on semantics and pedantry is a HN pastime. It may even be it's primary function.

its*

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#397

Post by necovek »

nickff wrote: post #282
pseudalopex wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The view LLMs should respect open source software licenses is not for replication alone. Models and generated code are derived from training data.

Developers are permitted to learn from open source code with restrictive copyrights, and apply those lessons to developing other software which does not comply with the copyright of their 'example'. As an aside, I do believe that LLM trainers are ignoring and violating many licenses, but open-source software is not a clear example of a violation.

Depends on how you define "learn": usually, a company wanting to rebuild and publish something under a different license prohibits their developers from having ever looked at original code, to avoid the risk of copying over exact snippets out of their memory accidentally.

Copyright protects only arbitrarily non-trivial parts of the original being reproduced, but that means that you have to be careful with learning from copyrighted material. Programming books will have direct clauses allowing snippet reuse, but not for teaching purposes.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#398

Post by muyuu »

malfist wrote: post #219
Aurornis wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A short while ago, someone on Reddit pointed out that something on Google Maps was wrong and so I went and submitted a fix and told them how to and I received a barrage of comments about working for free for a corporation that's making money off me. Did you respond by asking them how Reddit makes money? The anti-corporate mentality isn't new, but it does surface in different ways and communities over time. The Redd…

Hell, reddit hates on reddit all the time. Spez in particular is hated across the board. Agree that they largely don't change behavior. Although I will say, I've not logged into my account since the API shenanigans and don't regularly visit the site anymore. I'm mostly just on here and fark.

Most left leaning forums look negatively on profit motive, and reddit is largely very left wing. Whatever that means nowadays. It's reasonable to be wary of incentives, but sometimes that zeal is misplaced.

Having said that, I don't think any site can go mainstream and maintain a semblance of quality discourse. If nothing else, it will become botted and infiltrated by shills. But even without that, normies will ruin it much earlier than any sophisticated attacks are necessary.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#399

Post by ares623 »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #325
indemnity wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100% already happening. No need to worry about licensing or dependencies any more, just have the LLM launder it into a plausibly different structure!

This kind of reminds me how I saw some teams deal with a vulnerability scanner flagging an OSS dependency as having a reported vulnerability. The dependency was always OSS anyways. Copy & paste the entire thing into your project. Voila, dependency scanner doesn't find any problems any longer.

Even AI couldn't have come up with that!

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#400

Post by aeonfox »

BarryMilo wrote: post #396
aeonfox wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More succinctly, Carmack only contributes his code to OSS, but not his time , and shouldn't impose his values on the wider community that contribute both. > technically correct, but in context I think that's somewhat beside the point Talking past people to argue on semantics and pedantry is a HN pastime. It may even be it's primary function.

its*

Well done
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