Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it toLLMs: (enable that)Free software people: Oh no not like that
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Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!
@mjg59 So the big thing is that all art belongs to society. To promote creation, society grants limited exclusivity, mostly to fund the work.
This means that, in a utopia, copyright wouldn't exist because everyone could stand on everyone else's shoulders.
The biggest problem is the tail wagging the dog. It's not about promoting creation. It's about giving power plays in the game of life to a selected few. That's literally oppression.
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@mjg59
there is a difference between writing code and software engineeringwriting code requires no understanding or decision making abilities, the attitude is "if it works it works" even if it doesn't work because you don't know enough to realize there is a problem
when an engineer makes something, they make decisions and evaluate those decisions based on their knowledge and experience
I value the engineering, I see no value in someone wrangling an LLM
@tthbaltazar @mjg59 holy shit this
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System shared this topic
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@mjg59 So the big thing is that all art belongs to society. To promote creation, society grants limited exclusivity, mostly to fund the work.
This means that, in a utopia, copyright wouldn't exist because everyone could stand on everyone else's shoulders.
The biggest problem is the tail wagging the dog. It's not about promoting creation. It's about giving power plays in the game of life to a selected few. That's literally oppression.
@mjg59 Of course somewhat ironic because you'll sometimes get oppressor on oppressor conflicts... but, like Alien vs Predator, whoever wins, humans lose.
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Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!
@mjg59 thankfully there are plenty of other reasons to dispise LLMs, so we don’t really have to have this discussion
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Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!
@mjg59 Yeah, as soon as there‘s an ethically sourced and trained free LLM that‘s not controlled by very shitty companies I‘m totally on board with you.
Until then we shouldn’t let that shit near our projects.
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Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!
@mjg59 I agree not all code is art, and often not even craft. But contrary to optimizing compilers, we're not yet at a point where the generated code only needs to be read/modified by a handful of optimization experts, as it is with ASM. The generated code isn't even reliably identical between 2 prompts.
The AIGen'd code I've seen can be quite elegant taken in isolation, but looks a lot like a Frankenstein'd behemoth when I look at "large" (beyond toy project) code bases.
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Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!
@mjg59 that sounds illegal. i'm thinking of specific cases like re3. but that may be a language barrier problem. (re3 creators settled with taketwo in court eventually)
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/take-two-sues-creators-of-gta-reverse-engineering-project-re3/1100-6495920/ -
@mjg59 Yeah, as soon as there‘s an ethically sourced and trained free LLM that‘s not controlled by very shitty companies I‘m totally on board with you.
Until then we shouldn’t let that shit near our projects.
@chris_evelyn That is a coherent position that I have no fundamental disagreement with
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Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it to
LLMs: (enable that)
Free software people: Oh no not like that@mjg59 Fuck off with that shit. This doesn't even smell like a good faith argument.
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Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn "increment this variable" into life changing prose. The creativity exists outside the code. It always has done and it always will do. Let it go.
@mjg59 Weird view of writers as a group you are expressing here, in order to make this distinction.
Code isn't there to be art, sure. It is there to communicate, though. Making this some weird thing about art, as if that's the only reason software developers might not want LLM generated code in their code bases, is… disingenuous to say the least.
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Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!
@mjg59 I agree with this last statement
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@mjg59 Yeah, as soon as there‘s an ethically sourced and trained free LLM that‘s not controlled by very shitty companies I‘m totally on board with you.
Until then we shouldn’t let that shit near our projects.
@chris_evelyn @mjg59 Isn't https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2025/09/press-release-apertus-a-fully-open-transparent-multilingual-language-model.html supposed to be something like that?
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Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn "increment this variable" into life changing prose. The creativity exists outside the code. It always has done and it always will do. Let it go.
@mjg59 I disagree. Code is written for people, not computers. It doesn’t matter where the creativity exists, if companies/people reap it without giving a damn.
“Let it go!” == “Don’t fight it!”
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Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it to
LLMs: (enable that)
Free software people: Oh no not like that@mjg59 IIRC a big confusion was that early on Copilot would generate verbatim copies of existing, GPL'ed code, including comments. I do neither understand why that was the case or if that has changed, but my understanding of other LLMs is that they don't work in a way that they are just literally reproducing existing input.
I think you are right in pointing out that writing code is not really a artistic/creative job, no matter what we have been saying to ourselves.
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When I write code I am turning a creative idea into a mechanical embodiment of that idea. I am not creating beauty. Every line of code I write is a copy of another line of code I've read somewhere before, lightly modified to meet my needs. My code is not intended to evoke emotion. It does not change people think about the world. The idea→code pipeline in my head is not obviously distinguishable from the prompt->code process in an LLM
@mjg59 this feels like a weird reduction of the argument as LLMs as used by people do more than generate code at a micro-level (statements et al, regardless of your thinking those can't be creative), they are also used to architect codebases entirely
regardless, disappointing to read your apparent need to defend slop
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@mjg59 IIRC a big confusion was that early on Copilot would generate verbatim copies of existing, GPL'ed code, including comments. I do neither understand why that was the case or if that has changed, but my understanding of other LLMs is that they don't work in a way that they are just literally reproducing existing input.
I think you are right in pointing out that writing code is not really a artistic/creative job, no matter what we have been saying to ourselves.
@mjg59 That being said, I do think that the "Free Software" concern is legitimate, especially when people are replicating existing GPL programs to circumvent copyleft and undermining a sense of community. After all, copyleft means that you are publishing the source of a program, thereby respecting the user, under the condition that they return the same respect and treat everyone else under the same terms.
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Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!
@mjg59 What you propose is actually illegal, even if the law doesn’t make much sense. I wonder if you ever had the cops sent after you on a corp-run IP case… maybe it would make you feel different?
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@mjg59
there is a difference between writing code and software engineeringwriting code requires no understanding or decision making abilities, the attitude is "if it works it works" even if it doesn't work because you don't know enough to realize there is a problem
when an engineer makes something, they make decisions and evaluate those decisions based on their knowledge and experience
I value the engineering, I see no value in someone wrangling an LLM
@tthbaltazar I agree with your distinction, and also both outcomes can involve me either writing by hand or engaging sufficiently clearly with an LLM to get that outcome.
But, well, we all know software engineering isn't what we all engage in. Sometimes we just want to fix a thing and we don't want to write tests and we don't want it to be perfect and there's value in that!
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Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn "increment this variable" into life changing prose. The creativity exists outside the code. It always has done and it always will do. Let it go.
@mjg59 Ok, but the process of writing code is creative. You think as you write, new ideas are formed. The LLM process at least reduces that.
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@mjg59 This doesn't feel right to me. IMO few people actually object to use of LLMs by individuals for tinkering on personal stuff.
The criticism as I see it is primarily that:
1) there are huge societal/political impacts - uncompensated use of copyrighted material; benefits of it accruing primarily to a few big players; energy use; layoffs; perceived misallocation of massive amounts of capital
2) the output quality of LLMs is t r a s h, unsuitable for professional use@radex See I fundamentally don't believe that code should be copyrightable and also me 30 years ago did not produce code that was suitable for professional use but it fixed my problems anyway
