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Ask HN: Why aren't maintainers worried about the Copyright status of LLM output?

1 points by qtqtqt ↗ HN
LLM output, according to court rulings IIUC, cannot be copyrighted. This should worry both proprietary software companies and open source projects alike (because you can't put a license on something you don't hold the rights for). Yet, even Linux is accepting LLM-generated code. Do they (not just Linux) have a plan?

3 comments

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jeanpah
I'm having the same doubt, it really sounds like nobody cares anymore. maybe we are witnessing the dead of the copyright for software? I mean, it doesn't have even sense if you can just ask an agent to reimplement something with slight variations or even a totally different language.
verdverm
tl;dr

- linux situation has not changed much because projects have always been a mix

- keep putting a license anyway, we can always change them, and it shows the project owners intent, even if some provisions are later struck down in a case (like "as is, no liability")

- projects that are mostly/completely generated represent a new category

A few sources from a quick search and read for these points

- https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/ai-assisted-development-and-o...

- https://legalblogs.wolterskluwer.com/copyright-blog/open-sou...

- https://allthingsopen.org/articles/copyright-problem-ai-gene...

- https://opensource.org/ai/webinars/copyright-right-answer-fo...

I use a permissionless license (MIT/Apache-2), so I'm personally not that worried about it. Do what you want with my creations.