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

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.

@cwebber

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.

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.

@trashheap

Hopefully it is clear now that it was a misunderstanding.

Cc: @cwebber

@evan

@cwebber it is for these reasons we need something better than open source. An ethical open license.

@bkuhn @trashheap I appreciate the clarification on your position here.

I still do hold the positions that attribution are the glue that hold the commons together, and it's important that we fight to preserve it, and not give the impression that it is being voluntarily waived in the face of LLMs.

@cwebber @bkuhn @trashheap@tech.lgbt If bkuhn's right that permissive licenses make attribution hard to enforce, then the best way to accomplish that would be to use copyleft.

Anyway, if you keep Apache v2, it would certainly make sense to include a NOTICE file, since currently an Object derived from goblins does not need to attribute you at all. And as Apache v2 defines "Object", that seems to include AI models.

@joeyh @bkuhn Hm, interesting point re: NOTICE

@joeyh @bkuhn I have always found NOTICE to be pretty weird

@bkuhn @trashheap I appreciate the clarification on your position here.

I still do hold the positions that attribution are the glue that hold the commons together, and it's important that we fight to preserve it, and not give the impression that it is being voluntarily waived in the face of LLMs.

@cwebber @bkuhn @trashheap IMO the real challenge to FOSS enforcement against LLM producers is the same one everyone else has: if the training is fair use because the resulting model is transformative, the producer doesn’t need a license (and doesn’t have to respect the terms of any existing license). It’s still early early days in terms of court decisions, but this looks like the direction we’re headed in the US (though the outcome will likely vary depending on how much memorization a model can be shown to do).

@copiesofcopies @bkuhn @trashheap My main concern is that the resulting legislative environment is as equitable for FOSS as it is for the proprietary world, whatever the outcome is. In many ways this is why I'm happy to see the vibe-laundered versions of Adobe's suite etc, I think that will push the issue.

@joeyh @bkuhn However in the case of code, I think attribution is more important to me on source than on object form anyway, since that's where the cultural history of the collaborative work is kept

@cwebber @bkuhn @trashheap unfortunately, we’re falling behind quickly, just in terms of the regulatory impact on who can afford to build competitive models. The CLAIM Act (just introduced) is basically designed to compel anyone who trains a model to either: (1) make it impossible for that model to accidentally cause harm, or (2) buy expensive insurance to cover the damage from inevitable harm.

@joeyh @bkuhn However in the case of code, I think attribution is more important to me on source than on object form anyway, since that's where the cultural history of the collaborative work is kept

@cwebber @bkuhn If I compile goblins and give the object file to someone, without attributing you -- as Apache v2 seems to allow sans NOTICE* -- and that person decompiles it, we've generated source code that is derived from goblins but does not attribute you. Seemingly legally.

Wouldn't the same apply to generating an LLM and using it no matter what you might ask in your README?

* ignoring moral rights

@xinniw @cwebber I've drawn this comparison before, and I'm sure I will again, but the very first Easter Eggs in video games were... credits.

Why were they credits? Because Atari didn't want to include credit to the people who made the game. And you can't tell that story without it being intuitively obvious that Atari were being indefensible assholes. And now every video game has credits in it - most people won't pay too much attention to the contents, but the record is still important to the people who actually worked to make the thing, and to the people who love those people. The sky didn't fall from credits existing. The world got a little better actually.

But the capitalist incentive to alienate people from their labor, and consumers from the humanity of the people making their stuff, has never *stopped.* LLMs are just the next chapter of the story, the throughline of indefensible assholes that want to model labor as anonymous and interchangeable cogs, especially erasing minorities from history.

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.

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.