I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains.
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@petealexharris @hajovonta I don’t think your argument tracks, because the product of LLMs cannot* be copyrighted. So it’s not a way to enclose the commons.
*Based on my understanding of copyright law, but will be determined based on massive litigation.
@adamrice @petealexharris @hajovonta What copyright law is this and how does it exclude derivative works?
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris Yeah but we'll do it again. There's already models that run locally. A lot of the datasets are free, open weights models exist, etc. But yeah, it's similar dynamic all over again.
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris Yup. Using OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2026 is the socioeconomic-structural equivalent of computing on an IBM mainframe in 1966.
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris It's the least oligarch-friendly bubble ever. Perfect substitutability. If Claude becomes too expensive, you can just go to Gemini, Chatgpt, Mistral or one of the Chinese ones and continue right where you left off. You'd have a better argument if you wrote this about the virtual girlfriend usage..
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris
And that explains why Microsoft is so keen on AI too, to them it means they can go back in time to an era when they had control, when they could charge a mint for a shitty, buggy, insecure OS that kept crashing with "Fatal Exception 0E" and BSODs every time you tried to read a PDF document -
I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris I sometimes wonder when they will convince governments that software will be “unsafe” unless it’s made with certain programming languages, cloud IDEs, and only running in certified clouds.
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@adriano
Using it is OK. When they got caught violating copyright, which wasn't always I'll grant you, it was uncomfortable for them.With LLMs trained on huge swathes of copyrighted works without scrutiny or attribution they can do it at unprecedented scale, and with regulatory capture letting them do it, they have essentially already carried out the heist.
The only question now is whether they can fence the stolen goods and for how much.
@petealexharris @adriano throw into the mix also the whole «supply chain» bullshit that they tried to push with questionable success through their propaganda machines (sorry, “major tech journals”). Now they're trying to get control of it by making *themselves* an essential part of the supply chain of FLOSS development through their LLM control.
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@petealexharris It's the least oligarch-friendly bubble ever. Perfect substitutability. If Claude becomes too expensive, you can just go to Gemini, Chatgpt, Mistral or one of the Chinese ones and continue right where you left off. You'd have a better argument if you wrote this about the virtual girlfriend usage..
@trademark
If a significant fraction of the global software market is captured by a handful of big players who own and trade shares of that market among themselves, your ability to move from one to the other (at your own inconvenience, risk and expense) is of no concern to any of them. -
@petealexharris Eh. Given the amount of times I've seen "X project used the world over by every multinational ever is badly maintained by like one dude in Nebrahoma because nobody pays for it", I'm not sure about your base argument.
@adriano @petealexharris There are institutions that can support free software projects (and other public goods) that would render IP obsolete.
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@adamrice @petealexharris @hajovonta What copyright law is this and how does it exclude derivative works?
@njsg @petealexharris @hajovonta Whether you treat LLM output as a derivative work is an interesting question, and not an angle I was considering. I was thinking of U.S. copyright law, and one principle of it is that it only applies to work by people. So that famous monkey selfie is not copyrightable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
Hi @petealexharris
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@hajovonta I am not impressed by people who just blanketly condemn new technology. They are often motivated by fear and paranoia. The world is not so simple.
@galaxy_map @hajovonta Do you know who you are talking to well enough to know that they ARE blanket condeming new technology? Cause this tech has plenty of properties that make it worth condeming on its own.
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris In the early days of the internet people would build their own websites to create content that mattered to them for fun, they'd join #usenet groups and share software especially free #opensource software, the mentality was share with the world not for likes / status but for the benefit of everyone... Then corporations, ad companies and normies who want to make money online, took over every online space to do the bidding of oligarchs for them and #enshitification is the result.
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris
Very insightful! That makes total sense. -
@petealexharris Thing is, free software didn't "appear", proprietary software did. Free software came first. It's the natural state of these machines. Every decade or so they come up with some new tactic to try to overcome that but it never quite works...
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
very astute observation that more people need to understand
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris @ohne_sonne « We can't own those blueprints and chairs and tables because they are "free software"?
No problem, we will make you and your descendants depend entirely on our hammers, nails and saws that we will resell you for a subscription fee that we may increase at any time.
Also they come with ads now and we sell your personal info.
Please stop learning anything else.
Oh and also we will buy every piece of iron and coal making it unaffordable to forge your own tools. » -
I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris LLM = Layers of Layers of Misunderstandings
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I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?
The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.
@petealexharris Not sure what you mean by “appearance” but free software has been around since the late 1950s, when compilers were first passed around.
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Somehow I suspect that once they've finished stealing the entire body of human knowledge, they will *copyright* that knowledge and require anyone who wants to use any part of it to pay through the nose.
What do you think?
