Post #3218055

2025-03-11 00:41 UTC

@micr0@fuzzies.wtf @esm@wetdry.world TOS cannot transfer copyright, the reason the FSF (who sucks) requires a hand-signed contract (i actually think they accept email now) for gnu contributors is bc that means the contributors can't decide to later enforce their copyright e.g. to stop the project from later changing the license (GPLv3 encourages the "or any later version" clause for related reasons). this is well established by legal precedent

Replies (2)

@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run 2025-03-11 00:43

@micr0@fuzzies.wtf @esm@wetdry.world in the case of copilot, github/microsoft/openai claim that using code to train an LLM is fair use, which is a novel legal theory currently being tested in court with the class action lawsuit. it is unrelated to the github TOS and the outcome of that case (along with the related hachette vs IA) determines whether any type of scraping can be considered fair use, which would essentially mean (imho) that anything posted publicly on the internet goes into the public domain (this is very abbreviated but i don't think exaggerated)

Open ##3218056
@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run 2025-03-11 00:53

@micr0@fuzzies.wtf @esm@wetdry.world i'm not sure what happens if i contribute code to a repo, then later decide i want to enforce my copyright and demand they remove it. i would hope that a code contribution implicitly establishes indemnification of other contributors against infringement as the code contribution is then considered to be part of a combined work as opposed to a distinct work. this is why the list of contributors is more than just nice, it also describes (but does not define) the owners of the copyright for that work (who then have standing to make an infringement claim)

Open ##3218059