We now note that that we do not waive our attribution requirements for Spritely Goblins, which are present in Apache v2 (and for that matter, CC BY, CC BY-SA, and most FOSS licenses) https://codeberg.org/spritely/goblins/pulls/998/files
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
@cwebber I care heavily about attribution because that's the way you trace back to who's responsible for a piece of code. You can't enforce any other requirements if you can't identify who the code came from, and you end up taking the heat for any problems.
And of course there's the good-manners part, which I prefer to be the important part because the above only matters if there's problems and I prefer there not to be problems.
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
I'd say I mostly care about attribution for my own projects in the same manner that I care about copyleft. I want software to be an unmistakably social endeavour, and I think attribution is a piece of that goal in addition to copyleft. I weigh copyleft a little higher because it makes up more of the pieces of my ideals by number, but I think attribution is very important as well. It's important to see code in its social context.
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
@cwebber I definitely think sharing credit for where I got an idea is super important! I do appreciate when I receive it, but definitely think I care more about making sure I give the proper credit.
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
@cwebber I, for one, mainly care about proper attribution. Aside from MIT/BSD and LGPL for software, most all the #3DPrinting designs i publish go up under CC BY 4.0.
Attribution is key.
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@cwebber Too many folks in and around FOSS think "nobody has taken enforcement action over this, therefore nobody actually cares about it." It's wrong and it signals that the person is thinking about FOSS in terms of what they can extract rather than a collaboration among peers.
@CyrikCroc @cwebber this!
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We now note that that we do not waive our attribution requirements for Spritely Goblins, which are present in Apache v2 (and for that matter, CC BY, CC BY-SA, and most FOSS licenses) https://codeberg.org/spritely/goblins/pulls/998/files
So if you train on our codebase, you have to retain attribution, which we consider the most important requirement to motivate development of technology in the commons.
If, somehow, you are using a statistical soup which has no way to preserve attribution, well, we don't permit or approve of dropping such a requirement, and actually, the licenses we use never have.
@cwebber attribution is vital for many of the reasons people pointed out already. But I can honestly say that every email with "hey, I have a problem with your stuff" is 100x better than 100 stars on a repo or whatever.
It simply wouldn't happen if nobody knew I wrote the code.
If nothing else, it underlines for me how this whole thing really is about people.
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
@cwebber I’ve always been surprised when I hear people say that given how many people clearly value it!
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
@cwebber having unwittingly become an expert in a certain cursed project, I say: attribution is SUPER IMPORTANT.
The cursed project when it was announced tried to hide they were based on ATproto, then launched and quietly went closed-source à la Truth Social.
And whenever they use other people’s tools built on ATproto, they are TERRIBLE at crediting them. Ouuuuuuf!
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
What did we call not attributing works in college? Plagiarism. Instant expulsion.
Attribute always, more attributions, higher the grade. Attributions make communities.
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
@cwebber I care about attribution. More so than in the past. Now that the fruits of our commons labour are being sucked into the genAI blender, sold back to the commons without consent nor attribution I try to be precise in giving proper attribution. I wish @creativecommons had stood up in enforcing attribution. Sadly they did not. Nor did other organisations afaik.
Makes me wonder what will be left of copyright. Will it solely be a right for the rich & powerful? Maybe it already was?
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
(1/2) IMO @cwebber has made a strawperson argument, because I don't know anyone (at least, anyone who is serious about #FOSS policy & how its impacted by LLM-gen-AI) who says “nobody cares about attribution requirements”.
I can only speak for my own position, but my position (based on 30 years of community observation) is that (a) attribution is not particularly important to most *who choose* **non**-copyleft, & (b) attribution *alone* never had a particularly good enforcement hook.…
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(1/2) IMO @cwebber has made a strawperson argument, because I don't know anyone (at least, anyone who is serious about #FOSS policy & how its impacted by LLM-gen-AI) who says “nobody cares about attribution requirements”.
I can only speak for my own position, but my position (based on 30 years of community observation) is that (a) attribution is not particularly important to most *who choose* **non**-copyleft, & (b) attribution *alone* never had a particularly good enforcement hook.…
(2/2)…
I further am quite confident that we can rework #copyleft licenses to address most of the worst problems that #LLMGenAI represents for the future of #SoftwareFreedom.I've been working on itsince ≈2026-05. It's slow going, but I'm confident that #CopyleftNext will present a good solution.
Meanwhile, I recently asked for @cwebber's help toward this, but didn't receive a response. If you have time, pls respond to this:
https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn/117425328332275949 -
(1/2) IMO @cwebber has made a strawperson argument, because I don't know anyone (at least, anyone who is serious about #FOSS policy & how its impacted by LLM-gen-AI) who says “nobody cares about attribution requirements”.
I can only speak for my own position, but my position (based on 30 years of community observation) is that (a) attribution is not particularly important to most *who choose* **non**-copyleft, & (b) attribution *alone* never had a particularly good enforcement hook.…
Maybe ive been reading too much into some words; or maybe Ive misunderstood.
BUT some of your conversations and comments on LLMs to me and others have had a distinct "attribution is going to be fucked in a post-LLM world, the best we can hope for is to preserve copyleft" vibe to it.
I would be hard pressed to find an example in our own comment history; as my toots self destruct after a few months. BUT it's definitely come up.
Anyway; am I wrong in that sentiment? Do you think there is a way forward with some of these LLM concerns preserving attribution?
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Maybe ive been reading too much into some words; or maybe Ive misunderstood.
BUT some of your conversations and comments on LLMs to me and others have had a distinct "attribution is going to be fucked in a post-LLM world, the best we can hope for is to preserve copyleft" vibe to it.
I would be hard pressed to find an example in our own comment history; as my toots self destruct after a few months. BUT it's definitely come up.
Anyway; am I wrong in that sentiment? Do you think there is a way forward with some of these LLM concerns preserving attribution?
If a statement I made seemed like I said that, I either misspoke or it was misquoted. (Also, I wouldn't have 🤬'd making a point like this in any event.)
My position is instead that enforcement of attribution requirements **by themselves** (without other copyleft provisions to provide scaffolding) has always been extremely difficult to nearly impossible in real world contexts. #LLMGenAI may make the problem more acute, but the problem has always been there.
Cc: @cwebber
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If a statement I made seemed like I said that, I either misspoke or it was misquoted. (Also, I wouldn't have 🤬'd making a point like this in any event.)
My position is instead that enforcement of attribution requirements **by themselves** (without other copyleft provisions to provide scaffolding) has always been extremely difficult to nearly impossible in real world contexts. #LLMGenAI may make the problem more acute, but the problem has always been there.
Cc: @cwebber
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Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.
If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.
@cwebber while I use #llms a lot, it actually makes me seek out relevant resources and projects and learn about them, all of those I can find, and I make sure they are cross referenced and mentioned in the docs on the project. I find that to be a pretty good solution, not only in terms of exposure and surfacing smaller efforts, but because I spend time learning about the internals and not just import a lib and struggle with the api surface. Also find a lot of the original sources (papers, textbooks, etc…) which… are not often mentioned at all anyway (!).
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We now note that that we do not waive our attribution requirements for Spritely Goblins, which are present in Apache v2 (and for that matter, CC BY, CC BY-SA, and most FOSS licenses) https://codeberg.org/spritely/goblins/pulls/998/files
So if you train on our codebase, you have to retain attribution, which we consider the most important requirement to motivate development of technology in the commons.
If, somehow, you are using a statistical soup which has no way to preserve attribution, well, we don't permit or approve of dropping such a requirement, and actually, the licenses we use never have.
@cwebber that's very interesting!
I'm not sure your licenses apply to training LLMs; it's not clear to me that copyright governs the training process.
I know you think differently; that a license attaches like a spell to the bits and bytes, no matter how small the excerpt or how varied the rearrangement.
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@cwebber that's very interesting!
I'm not sure your licenses apply to training LLMs; it's not clear to me that copyright governs the training process.
I know you think differently; that a license attaches like a spell to the bits and bytes, no matter how small the excerpt or how varied the rearrangement.
The mechanism is not the issue. I think the expression of author intent is really important!
For Web resources, we have the AI preferences from IETF:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-aipref-attach-05
But, of course, Free Software doesn't just come from one website. It's made to be spread around. It would be good to have some sort of AI prefs expressed in the package itself, no matter where it is.
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The mechanism is not the issue. I think the expression of author intent is really important!
For Web resources, we have the AI preferences from IETF:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-aipref-attach-05
But, of course, Free Software doesn't just come from one website. It's made to be spread around. It would be good to have some sort of AI prefs expressed in the package itself, no matter where it is.
@cwebber it is for these reasons we need something better than open source. An ethical open license.
