Post #2900948

2026-04-18 14:16 UTC

@bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org @ossguy@fedi.copyleft.org @richardfontana@mastodon.social If we are pushing for an *equitable* scenario for copyright output, there is only one "good outcome" in terms of copyright, and that is that everything is effectively in the public domain. The dream of having a "copyleft LLM" doesn't work. And even if it did, there are several problems: - Nobody is using that *now*, and contributors are facing contributions *now*, and there is legal uncertainty about accepting those contributions *right now*. - It is unlikely that the "copyleft LLM" would be very useful. The way people use these tools is conversational in a way that requires them to effectively have to be trained on the entire internet to be functional. Not just copyleft codebases. The copyleft LLM dream is a joke.

Replies (1)

@cwebber@social.coop 2026-04-18 14:18

@bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org @ossguy@fedi.copyleft.org @richardfontana@mastodon.social I say "good outcome", and I'm not saying it's an outcome I want, because "what I want" is pretty complicated here. I'm saying, it's the only one where there is the possibility of legal output from these tools that can safely be incorporated into FOSS projects *at all* that is *equitable* for both FOSS and proprietary situations. And yup, unfortunately, that would mean copyright-laundering of FOSS codebases through LLMs would be possible to strip copyleft. It would also mean the same for proprietary codebases. Frankly I think it would kind of rule if we stabbed copyright in the gut that badly, but there's so much vested interest from various copyright holding corporations, I don't think we're likely to get that. Do you?

Open ##2900949