I thought the whole concept of a viral license was legally questionable to begin with. There haven't been cases about this, as far as I know, and GPL virality enforcement has just been done by the community.
The article goes deep into these two cases deemed most relevant but really there are a wide swath of similar cases all focused around defining sharper borders than ever around what is essentially the question "exactly when does it become copyright violation" with plenty of seemingly "obvious" answers which quickly conflict with each other.
I also have the feeling it will be much like Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., much of this won't really be clearly resolved until the end if the decade. I'd also not ve surprised if seemingly very different answers ended up bubbling up in the different cases, driven by the specifics of the domain.
Not a lawyer, just excited to see the outcomes :).
What triggers me is how insistant Claude Code is on adding "co-authored by Claude" in commits, in spite of my settings and an instruction in CLAUDE.md. I wish all these tech bros were as willing to credit the human shoulders on which their products are built. But they'd be much less successful in our current system if they were that kind of people.
Copyleft isn't about the software authors freedom, it's about the end-users freedom. Copyleft grants the end-user the freedom to study and modify the code, i.e. the right to repair. Contrast this with closed-source software which may incorporate permissively licensed code: the end-user has no right to study, no right to modify, and no right to repair. Ergo less freedom.
Why forbid it when you could do exactly what this post suggests: go explicit and say that by including this copyrighted material in AI training you consent to release of the model. And you clarify that the terms are contractual, and that training the model on data represents implicit acceptance of the terms.
I honestly think that the most extreme take that "any output of an LLM falls under all the copyright of all its training data" is not really defensible, especially when contrasted with human learning, and would be curious to hear conflicting opinions.
My view is that copyright in general is a pretty abstract and artificial concept; thus corresponding regulation needs to justifiy itself by being useful, i.e. encouraging and rewarding content creation.
/sidenote:
Copyright as-is barely holds up there; I would argue that nobody (not even old established companies) is significantly encouraged or incentivised by potential revenue more than 20 years in the future (much less current copyright durations). The system also leads to bad ressource allocation, with almost all the rewards ending up at a small handful of most successful producers-- this effectively externalizes large portions of the cost of "raising" artists.
I view AI overlap under the same lense-- if current copyright rules would lead to undesirable outcomes (by making all AI training or use illegal/infeasible) then law/interpretation simply has to be changed.
Human learning is materially different from LLM training. They're similar in that both involve providing input to a system that can, afterwards, produce output sharing certain statistical regularities with the input, including rote recital in some cases – but the similarities end there.
> I view AI overlap under the same lense-- if current copyright rules would lead to undesirable outcomes (by making all AI training or use illegal/infeasible) then law/interpretation simply has to be changed
Not sure about undesirable, I so wish we could just ban all generative AI.
I feel profound sadness of having lost the world we had before generative AI became widespread. I really loved programming and seeing my trade devalued with vibe coding is just heart breaking. We will see mass unemployment, deep fakes, more AI induced psychosis, a devaluing of human art. I hate this new world.
It would be the morally correct thing to bann generative AI as it only benefits corporations and doesn't improve the life of the people but makes it worse.
The training of the big LLMs has been criminal. Whether we talk about GPL licensed code or the millions of artist that never released their work under a specific license and would never haven consented to it being used for training.
I still think states will allow it and legalize the crime because they believe that AI offer competitive advantages and they will fear "falling behind". Plus military use.
Reading your comment made me think about the other-side of the equation. I think it's generally considered that AI generated works are not themselves protected by copyright, I wonder if code with little to no human intervention become un-licenable.
You don't have any rights to assert when you have AI write the code for you.
I might be crazy, and I'd love to hear from somebody who knows about this, but I've been assuming that AI companies have been pulling GPL code out of the training material specifically to avoid this.
Corporations have always talked about the virality of GPL, sometimes but not always to the point of exaggeration, you'd think that after getting the proof of concept done the AI companies would be running away at full speed from setting a bomb like that in their goldmine.
Putting in tons of commonly read books and scientific papers is safer, they can just eventually cross-license with the massive conglomerates that own everything. But the GPL is by nature hostile, and has been openly and specifically hostile from the beginning. MIT and Apache, etc. you can just include a fistful of licenses to download, or even come up with architectures that track names to add for attribution-ware. But the GPL will obviously (and legitimately) claim to have relicensed the entire model and maybe all its output (unless they restricted it to LGPL.)
Genuine question: if I train my model with copyleft material, how do you prove I did?
Like if there is no way to trace it back to the original material, does it make sense to regulate it? Not that I like the idea, just wondering.
I have been thinking for a while that LLMs are copyright-laundering machines, and I am not sure if there is anything we can do about it other than accepting that it fundamentally changes what copyright is. Should I keep open sourcing my code now that the licence doesn't matter anymore? Is it worth writing blog posts now that it will just feed the LLMs that people use? etc.
There's the other side of this issue. The current position of the U.S. Copyright Office is that AI output is not copyrightable, because the Constitution's copyright clause only protects human authors. This is consistent with the US position that databases and lists are not copyrightable.[1]
Trump is trying to fire the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, but they work for the Library of Congress, not the executive branch, so that didn't work.[2]
By reverse inference and model inversion. We can determine what content a pathway has been trained on. We can find out if it’s been trained on GPL material.
Great article but I don't really agree with their take on GPL regarding this paragraph:
> The spirit of the GPL is to promote the free sharing and development of software [...] the reality is that they are proceeding in a different vector from the direction of code sharing idealized by GPL. If only the theory of GPL propagation to models walks alone, in reality, only data exclusion and closing off to avoid litigation risks will progress, and there is a fear that it will not lead to the expansion of free software culture.
The spirit of the GPL is the freedom of the user, not the code being freely shared. The virality is a byproduct to ensure the software is not stolen from their users. If you just want your code to be shared and used without restrictions, use MIT or some other license.
> What is important is how to realize the “freedom of software,” which is the philosophy of open source
Freedom of software means nothing. Freedoms are for humans not immaterial code. Users get the freedom to enjoy the software how they like. Washing the code through an AI to purge it from its license goes against the open source philosophy. (I know this may be a mistranslation, but it goes in the same direction as the rest of the article).
I also don't agree with the arguments that since a lot of things are included in the model, the GPL code is only a small part of the whole, and that means it's okay. Well if I take 1 GPL function and include it in my project, no matter its size, I would have to license as GPL. Where is the line? Why would my software which only contains a single function not be fair use?
> The spirit of the GPL is the freedom of the user, not the code being freely shared.
who do you mean by "user"?
the spirit is that the person who actually uses the software also has the freedom to modify it, and that the users recovering these modifications have the same rights.
is that what you meant?
and while technically that's the spirit of the GPL, the license is not only about users, but about a _relationship_, that of the user and the software and what the user is allowed to do with the software.
it thus makes sense to talk about "software freedom".
last not least, about a single GPL function --- many GPL _libraries_ are licensed less restrictively, LGPL.
The GPL arose from Stallman's frustration at not having access to the source code for a printer driver that was causing him grief.
In a world where he could have just said "Please create a PDP-whatever driver for an IBM-whatever printer," there never would have been a GPL. In that sense AI represents the fulfillment of his vision, not a refutation or violation.
I'd be surprised if he saw it that way, of course.
> The virality is a byproduct to ensure the software is not stolen from their users.
If Microsoft misappropriates GPL code how exactly is that "stealing" from me, the user, of that code? I'm not deprived in any way, the author is, so I can't make sense of your premise here.
> Freedom of software means nothing.
Software is information. Does "freedom of information" mean nothing? I think you're narrowing concepts here into something not particularly useful or reflective of reality.
> Users get the freedom to enjoy the software how they like.
The freedom is to modify the code for my own purposes. This is not at all required to plainly "enjoy" the software. I instead "enjoy a particular benefit."
> Why would my software which only contains a single function not be fair use?
Because fair use implies educational, informational, or transformational outputs. Your software is none of those things.
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Training is not redistribution. It's the exact same as you as a person learning to program from proprietary secret code, and then writing your own original code independently. Even if you repeat patterns and methods you've picked up from that proprietary learning material, it is by no means redistribution. The practical differentiator here is that you do not access the proprietary material during the creation of your own original work, similar in principle to a clean-room design. With AI/ML, it matters that training data is not accessed during inference, which it's not.
The other factor of copyright, which is relevant, is how material is obtained. If the material is publicly accessible without protection, you have no reasonable expectation to exclusive control over its use. If you don't want AI training to be done on your work, you need to put access to it behind explicit authentication with a legally-binding user agreement prohibiting that use-case. Do note that this would lose your project's status as open-source.
If its perfectly fine to 'learn from gpl code' This should mean that its perfectly fine to have a llm assist in clean room implementation/reverse engineering.
40 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 55.4 ms ] threadA lot of it boils down to whether training an LLM is a breach of copyright of the training materials which is not specific to GPL or open source.
It's just a side cost of doing business, because asking for forgiveness is cheaper and faster than asking for permission.
I also have the feeling it will be much like Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., much of this won't really be clearly resolved until the end if the decade. I'd also not ve surprised if seemingly very different answers ended up bubbling up in the different cases, driven by the specifics of the domain.
Not a lawyer, just excited to see the outcomes :).
GPL: Help the user
MIT: Help some random company screw the users and save money not hiring people.
Then again I see you're a founder at some AI company so I strongly doubt your motives and statement.
Generally speaking licenses give rights (they literally grant license). They can’t take rights away, only the legislature can do that.
My view is that copyright in general is a pretty abstract and artificial concept; thus corresponding regulation needs to justifiy itself by being useful, i.e. encouraging and rewarding content creation.
/sidenote: Copyright as-is barely holds up there; I would argue that nobody (not even old established companies) is significantly encouraged or incentivised by potential revenue more than 20 years in the future (much less current copyright durations). The system also leads to bad ressource allocation, with almost all the rewards ending up at a small handful of most successful producers-- this effectively externalizes large portions of the cost of "raising" artists.
I view AI overlap under the same lense-- if current copyright rules would lead to undesirable outcomes (by making all AI training or use illegal/infeasible) then law/interpretation simply has to be changed.
Not sure about undesirable, I so wish we could just ban all generative AI.
I feel profound sadness of having lost the world we had before generative AI became widespread. I really loved programming and seeing my trade devalued with vibe coding is just heart breaking. We will see mass unemployment, deep fakes, more AI induced psychosis, a devaluing of human art. I hate this new world.
It would be the morally correct thing to bann generative AI as it only benefits corporations and doesn't improve the life of the people but makes it worse.
The training of the big LLMs has been criminal. Whether we talk about GPL licensed code or the millions of artist that never released their work under a specific license and would never haven consented to it being used for training.
I still think states will allow it and legalize the crime because they believe that AI offer competitive advantages and they will fear "falling behind". Plus military use.
You don't have any rights to assert when you have AI write the code for you.
Corporations have always talked about the virality of GPL, sometimes but not always to the point of exaggeration, you'd think that after getting the proof of concept done the AI companies would be running away at full speed from setting a bomb like that in their goldmine.
Putting in tons of commonly read books and scientific papers is safer, they can just eventually cross-license with the massive conglomerates that own everything. But the GPL is by nature hostile, and has been openly and specifically hostile from the beginning. MIT and Apache, etc. you can just include a fistful of licenses to download, or even come up with architectures that track names to add for attribution-ware. But the GPL will obviously (and legitimately) claim to have relicensed the entire model and maybe all its output (unless they restricted it to LGPL.)
Wouldn't you just pull it out?
Like if there is no way to trace it back to the original material, does it make sense to regulate it? Not that I like the idea, just wondering.
I have been thinking for a while that LLMs are copyright-laundering machines, and I am not sure if there is anything we can do about it other than accepting that it fundamentally changes what copyright is. Should I keep open sourcing my code now that the licence doesn't matter anymore? Is it worth writing blog posts now that it will just feed the LLMs that people use? etc.
discovery via lawyers
https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/14369/files#diff-062dbbe...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039274
The burden is on you to prove that you didn't.
It may produce it when asked
https://chatgpt.com/share/678e3306-c188-8002-a26c-ac1f32fee4...
Trump is trying to fire the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, but they work for the Library of Congress, not the executive branch, so that didn't work.[2]
[1] https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...
[2] https://apnews.com/article/trump-supreme-court-copyright-off...
Discovery.
Training data extraction has seen some success, tracing should be possible for at least some of it
https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.17035
> The spirit of the GPL is to promote the free sharing and development of software [...] the reality is that they are proceeding in a different vector from the direction of code sharing idealized by GPL. If only the theory of GPL propagation to models walks alone, in reality, only data exclusion and closing off to avoid litigation risks will progress, and there is a fear that it will not lead to the expansion of free software culture.
The spirit of the GPL is the freedom of the user, not the code being freely shared. The virality is a byproduct to ensure the software is not stolen from their users. If you just want your code to be shared and used without restrictions, use MIT or some other license.
> What is important is how to realize the “freedom of software,” which is the philosophy of open source
Freedom of software means nothing. Freedoms are for humans not immaterial code. Users get the freedom to enjoy the software how they like. Washing the code through an AI to purge it from its license goes against the open source philosophy. (I know this may be a mistranslation, but it goes in the same direction as the rest of the article).
I also don't agree with the arguments that since a lot of things are included in the model, the GPL code is only a small part of the whole, and that means it's okay. Well if I take 1 GPL function and include it in my project, no matter its size, I would have to license as GPL. Where is the line? Why would my software which only contains a single function not be fair use?
who do you mean by "user"?
the spirit is that the person who actually uses the software also has the freedom to modify it, and that the users recovering these modifications have the same rights.
is that what you meant?
and while technically that's the spirit of the GPL, the license is not only about users, but about a _relationship_, that of the user and the software and what the user is allowed to do with the software.
it thus makes sense to talk about "software freedom".
last not least, about a single GPL function --- many GPL _libraries_ are licensed less restrictively, LGPL.
In a world where he could have just said "Please create a PDP-whatever driver for an IBM-whatever printer," there never would have been a GPL. In that sense AI represents the fulfillment of his vision, not a refutation or violation.
I'd be surprised if he saw it that way, of course.
If Microsoft misappropriates GPL code how exactly is that "stealing" from me, the user, of that code? I'm not deprived in any way, the author is, so I can't make sense of your premise here.
> Freedom of software means nothing.
Software is information. Does "freedom of information" mean nothing? I think you're narrowing concepts here into something not particularly useful or reflective of reality.
> Users get the freedom to enjoy the software how they like.
The freedom is to modify the code for my own purposes. This is not at all required to plainly "enjoy" the software. I instead "enjoy a particular benefit."
> Why would my software which only contains a single function not be fair use?
Because fair use implies educational, informational, or transformational outputs. Your software is none of those things.
Below are the four freedoms for those who are interested. Straight from the horse's mouth: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
The other factor of copyright, which is relevant, is how material is obtained. If the material is publicly accessible without protection, you have no reasonable expectation to exclusive control over its use. If you don't want AI training to be done on your work, you need to put access to it behind explicit authentication with a legally-binding user agreement prohibiting that use-case. Do note that this would lose your project's status as open-source.
Public trading of most trade secrets along with their owner corporations is also GPLish.