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AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

(github.com)
728 points freetonik | 3 comments | 21 Aug 25 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.73s | source
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neilv ◴[21 Aug 25 19:26 UTC] No.44976959[source]▶
There is also IP taint when using "AI". We're just pretending that there's not.

If someone came to you and said "good news: I memorized the code of all the open source projects in this space, and can regurgitate it on command", you would be smart to ban them from working on code at your company.

But with "AI", we make up a bunch of rationalizations. ("I'm doing AI agentic generative AI workflow boilerplate 10x gettin it done AI did I say AI yet!")

And we pretend the person never said that they're just loosely laundering GPL and other code in a way that rightly would be existentially toxic to an IP-based company.

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luma ◴[21 Aug 25 19:27 UTC] No.44976975[source]▶
Also ban StackOverflow and nearly any text book in the field.

The reality is that programmers are going to see other programmers code.

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JoshTriplett ◴[21 Aug 25 19:53 UTC] No.44977266[source]▶
"see" and "copy" are two different things. It's fine to look at StackOverflow to understand the solution to a problem. It's not fine to copy and paste from StackOverflow and ignore its license or attribution.

Content on StackOverflow is under CC-by-sa, version depends on the date it was submitted: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing . (It's really unfortunate that they didn't pick license compatible with code; at one point they started to move to the MIT license for code, but then didn't follow through on it.)

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wizzwizz4 ◴[21 Aug 25 22:39 UTC] No.44978973[source]▶
CC BY-SA 4.0 is "compatible with code". It is, for example, GPL-compatible (see https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ShareAlike_compatibili...). It's just not designed for code.
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1. JoshTriplett ◴[22 Aug 25 01:16 UTC] No.44980105[source]▶
That's a fair distinction. For the specific case of CC-by-sa 4.0, it's possible to convert to GPLv3. That doesn't help with prior versions of CC-by-sa.

So, for the specific case of material contributed to StackOverflow on or after 2018-05-02, it's possible to use it under GPLv3 (including appropriate attribution), so any project compatible with GPLv3 can copy it with attribution. Any material before that point is not safe to copy.

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2. wizzwizz4 ◴[22 Aug 25 04:32 UTC] No.44981009[source]▶
It does help with prior versions, since you can use CC BY-SA 3.0 material under CC BY-SA 4.0, which is GPLv3-compatible. (See https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/337742/308065.) It doesn't necessarily help with future versions.
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3. JoshTriplett ◴[22 Aug 25 10:22 UTC] No.44982790[source]▶
I stand corrected, thank you! I forgot that CC-by-sa included an automatic upgrade clause, unlike many other licenses that require an explicit "or any later version" to do that.