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Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

(github.com)
491 points todsacerdoti | 8 comments | 25 Jun 25 23:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.513s | source | bottom
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benlivengood ◴[26 Jun 25 00:21 UTC] No.44383064[source]▶
Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain.

In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the rest of the code would raise the question of whether subsequent human edits were non-fair-use derivative works.

In the latter case the license restrictions no longer apply to portions of the codebase raising similar issues from derived code; a project that is only 98% OSS/FS licensed suddenly has much less leverage in takedowns to companies abusing the license terms; having to prove that infringers are definitely using the human-generated and licensed code.

Proprietary software is only mildly harmed in either case; it would require speculative copyright owners to disassemble their binaries and try to make the case that AI-generated code infringed without being able to see the codebase itself. And plenty of proprietary software has public domain code in it already.

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deadbabe ◴[26 Jun 25 00:39 UTC] No.44383156[source]▶
If a software is truly wide open source in the sense of “do whatever the fuck you want with this code, we don’t care”, then it has nothing to fear from AI.
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1. kgwxd ◴[26 Jun 25 00:47 UTC] No.44383198[source]▶
Can't release someone else's proprietary source under a "do whatever the fuck you want" license and actually do whatever the fuck you want, without getting sued.
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2. deadbabe ◴[26 Jun 25 00:55 UTC] No.44383241[source]▶
It’d be like trying to squeeze blood from a stone
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3. clipsy ◴[26 Jun 25 02:21 UTC] No.44383680[source]▶
It'd be like trying to squeeze blood from every single entity using the offending code, actually.
4. CursedSilicon ◴[26 Jun 25 02:35 UTC] No.44383758[source]▶
It's incredible watching someone who has no idea what they're talking about boast so confidently about what people "can" or "can't" do
5. iechoz6H ◴[26 Jun 25 06:27 UTC] No.44384707[source]▶
You can do that but the fact you don't get sued is more luck than judgement.
6. rzzzt ◴[26 Jun 25 06:43 UTC] No.44384793[source]▶
The license does exist so you can release your own software under it, however: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL
7. TeMPOraL ◴[26 Jun 25 06:56 UTC] No.44384892[source]▶
Only more reason for OSS to embrace AI generation - once it leaks into enough widely used or critical (think cURL) dependencies and exceeds certain critical mass, any judgement on the IP aspects other than "public domain" (in the broader sense) will become infeasible, as enforcing a different judgement would be like doing open heart surgery on the global economy.
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8. windward ◴[26 Jun 25 12:18 UTC] No.44386686[source]▶
That's the situation we're already in with copyleft licences but legal teams still treat them like the plague.