US Copyright Clash: LLM Output Sparks 'Licensing Hygiene Crisis' Between Open Source Purists and Legal Precedent Advocates

LLM generated code is an existential threat to #copyleft, if not all of #FLOSS at the fundamental level software licenses operate at (copyright) and we really need more free software organizations to do some moral and legal leadership here, badly and soon. #FSF #FSFE #SFConservancy #Linux #BSD

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/116426025287444979 I see myself getting subtooted by various people, and let me clarify what this thread is, and is not. My opinions on LLM usage are more complicated than "good vs bad". But I have created a scoped analysis here. My opinion is that we are facing a *licensing hygiene crisis* from a situation where we do not and probably will not know the licensing situation of these tools for some time. There are only two viable scenarios I can see: - LLM output is unusable and a copyright mess that cannot be incorporated in any FOSS project - *All* LLM output is effectively in the public domain. I am willing to accept either one of those, but the lack of knowledge of which situation we are facing makes me concerned about LLM based contributions entering FOSS projects on copyright grounds. (There are plenty of other debates one can have about LLMs also, I have scoped them out of this particular thread.)

@cwebber If there was ever a time in 40+ years of #FOSS history to tell our #copyleft-hating FOSS friends that they erred in their license choices, now is the time. If they don't switch, they're giving hand-outs to the proprietary software companies. Now, in an entirely new & #disturbing way. I really think these cases where proprietary software ends up in #LLM training sets & actually creates risk are exceedingly rare, if not entirely hypothetical. Cc: @bwana @zacchiro @richardfontana