Post #2796016

2026-03-07 23:24 UTC

@soph@grrl.me Ah ok! In practice I expect there is likely going to be a pretty big difference between the two. Once you get down to brass tacks: if a human is the one driving then it becomes hard to come up with language that does ban LLMs, but does not also ban things like compilers and digital cameras. Because both of those are also instances of: "I pressed a button and it automatically generated binary output – none of which was produced directly by me."

Replies (3)

@soph@grrl.me 2026-03-07 23:39

@yosh@toot.yosh.is This is a bit different than those examples, though. In the case of code, we're talking about the source code itself, regardless of further application of tools to it. If the code itself cannot be copyrighted, then how it plays into the IP required to participate in open source becomes the issue

Open ##2796017
@maccruiskeen@social.linux.pizza 2026-03-11 12:35

@yosh@toot.yosh.is @soph@grrl.me From a copyright perspective object code is a direct translation of the human-written source code. It's a 'derivative work', like any other translation. In copyright, there is a distinction between the idea and the expression of the idea, so saying 'I have an idea for some code' aand then the AI does the work, the work is not copyrightable. It may, however, be basically plagiarizing other work in the process. One expects this will not be last we hear from lawyers.

Open ##2796026
@chrysn@chaos.social 2026-03-11 21:07

@yosh@toot.yosh.is @soph@grrl.me Something I've been working with in that distinction is "it produces bugs, can you or someone else go find what went wrong and fix it?" This clearly tells apart compilers, linters and dictionary based spellcheckers from AI tools. (It may also place non-FLOSS, especially online, tools in the AI category accidentally, but that's not too bad as you can't disprove that they are).

Open ##2796027