Post #2900960

2026-04-18 15:29 UTC

@cwebber@social.coop @LordCaramac@discordian.social @bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org @richardfontana@mastodon.social Sadly it will be years before we have an answer re copyright and we can't wait for that. Outlining usage in the meantime is the best we can do, in case we need to do something with that later. We know proprietary software companies are using these tools extensively, so this is in effect a mutually assured destruction situation. While we wait, we should make sure that we are pushing freedom on all other axes, since they won't do that part.

Replies (3)

@bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org 2026-04-18 15:34

@cwebber@social.coop I agree with @ossguy@fedi.copyleft.org in particular because if *we* are copylefting our code (even if assisted by #LLM-backed gen-#AI), we won't face a copyleft claim later. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely these LLMs are (a) trained on proprietary software, and (b) any proprietary software company that so-trained would later claim infringement. #Microsoft has all but admitted they refuse to train Copilot on their own code anyway. Cc: @LordCaramac@discordian.social @richardfontana@mastodon.social

Open ##2900961
@wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems 2026-04-18 18:28

@ossguy@fedi.copyleft.org @cwebber@social.coop @LordCaramac@discordian.social @bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org @richardfontana@mastodon.social proprietary software companies extensively use GitHub and yet SFC's position is "don't use GitHub". There are so many things we do in free software and in the interactions with SFC and FSF that would be simpler if we used proprietary software. How many janky experiences have people been asking to tolerate to participate? Why shouldn't we use proprietary software there?

Open ##2900963
@nyc@discuss.systems 2026-04-18 23:33

@ossguy@fedi.copyleft.org @cwebber@social.coop @LordCaramac@discordian.social @bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org @richardfontana@mastodon.social This sounds to me like the proprietary software companies are using code LLMs to mass copyright launder copyleft, GPL etc. code so as to basically incorporate it all without honouring its code (re)distribution terms. This is a grimmer situation than I had anticipated, and I'm not widely known as an optimist.

Open ##2900965