A new twist in the "AI license laundering of chardet" story https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327

[cwebber@social.coop]

But really, relicensing a GPL codebase to MIT is uninteresting.

Let's do the interesting one, which is: vibe code a "clean room" reimplementation of an entire proprietary codebase! After all, Microsoft released a "shared source" proprietary version of Windows. Now try seeing what happens if you run THAT through the "turn it into public domain" machine

Win-win outcome, no matter how it goes

[cwebber@social.coop]

Winning option 1: yes, you can vibe code proprietary codebases into the public domain, allowing us to bootstrap proprietary codebases quickly

Winning option 2: stopping laundering of copyleft codebases

Either of these are interesting outcomes!

[lgsp@social.tchncs.de]

@cwebber fucking genius!

[ladytel@masto.hackers.town]

@cwebber I feel like I made the right call banning ai in my gplv2 project recently.

I'm very curious to see how this plays out

[cwebber@social.coop]

I left a comment to that effect here https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327#issuecomment-4005721071

[sanityinc@hachyderm.io]

@cwebber significant popcorn moment

[vv@solarpunk.moe]

@cwebber the losing outcome is people use it, but it is shitty, and then it's so widely adopted as a general concept that you're forced to use shitty software

[cwebber@social.coop]

@vv yeah that's defintely the shitty outcome for usability

But... given that a lot of shittiness comes from an *uneven playing field* when it comes to copyright stuff, and people thinking they can wear down the commons with no consequences, I think it's worth pushing the needle on this approach

[lizzy@social.vlhl.dev]

@cwebber it's just gonna launder wine code lol

[cwebber@social.coop]

omg I am just seeing now that the dude who did the "AI relicensing" fucking replied with an obvious slop response, of all the fucking disrespectful things to do, holy fucking shit https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327#issuecomment-4005195078

[eldaking@weirder.earth]

@cwebber I have been saying this since the first copilot iteration!

If Microsoft wants to show us how to launder copyright, by all means, let them.

[thomasjwebb@mastodon.social]

@cwebber that's exactly where my mind went to. Any time I've rewritten something that was in copyleft because I needed it copycenter or even with such inspiration, I wouldn't let myself even look at the original code. But it would be a net boon to OSS if the same rules apply to proprietary stuff. The bad situation would be if corporate lawyers effectively made it so that only their code is protected from such reimplementation.

[johnefrancis@cosocial.ca]

@cwebber good times!

It's going to be fun to see how the boundaries of "human produced work" are defined over time, but I expect it will work out in whatever way benefits the big money players in software and media.

Does this only apply to "AI"? What does that mean? If I have a machine generated background crowd or vapour in some frames of my $300M blockbuster movie, can I still copyright it?

[neurobashing@mastodon.social]

@cwebber happy to see Mark Pilgrim still exists, he sorta disappeared from public life and I hadn't seen him active in public-facing software at all

[njoseph@social.masto.host]

@cwebber Microsoft can still sue for patent violations. But Windows 7 is over 15 years old.

Also, trademark violations should be carefully avoided.

[kye@tech.lgbt]

@cwebber The ReactOS people take such careful steps to avoid any even potentially compromising contact with Windows source. I'm not a fan of copyright in general, but as long as it exists, people need to be mindful of what they're doing and the history it touches on.

It's a whole project of its own to get contributors to relicense their code and rewrite what can't be relicensed, and most projects that do it take a bunch of flak even if they have good reasons. (like GPL->AGPL)

And this dude just vibed his way through it

[etoani@freeradical.zone]

@cwebber I would very much like someone with a legal mind explain how software licenses interact with yesterday's ruling that AI gen work is not copyrightable. What exactly is the basis of the copyright here? I hope we get to see someone dive into this.

[kye@tech.lgbt]

@etoani @cwebber It was a decline to rule. The case they declined to rule on stood, and it focused narrowly on someone trying to get his pet AI recognized as sentient to qualify for authorship under copyright law.

Where the line is on how much authorship flips "authored parts are copyrightable" to "the whole thing is copyrighted" is still contested and evolving in courts.

edit: The SCOTUS likes to let lawyers duke it out in district courts and wait for enough rulings, especially with serious cross-district conflicts, at that level to pick from to hear.

[soapdog@toot.cafe]

@cwebber that whole relicensing and this slop reply are vomit inducing.

[dajb@social.coop]

@soapdog @cwebber It's just the lack of understanding of what an LLM is that's makes one's hand want to smack one's forehead. Or, preferably, his.