this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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I hate to say it, but I kinda hope the music copyright cartel wins this one, only for the precedent it would set about things like proprietary use of MS Copilot output being an infringement of GPL-licensed code.
I don't know which one is better tbh
the devil you know or the one you don't!
Having all AI-generated code be either "viral" copyleft or illegal to use at all would certainly be better than allowing massive laundering of GPL-licensed code for exploitation in proprietary software.
If they are using GPL code, shouldn't they also release their source code?
That's the argument I would be making, but it certainly isn't Microsoft's (Copilot), OpenAI's (Codex), etc's position: they think the output is sufficiently laundered from the GPL training data so as not to constitute a derivative work (which means none of the original licenses -- "open source" or otherwise -- would apply, and the recipient could do whatever they want).
Edit: actually, to be more clear, I would take either of two positions:
That the presence of GPL (or in general, copyleft) code in the training dataset requires all output to be GPL (or in general, copyleft).
That the presence of both GPL code and code under incompatible licenses in the training dataset means that the AI output cannot legally be used at all.
(Position #2 seems more likely, as the license for proprietary code would be violated, too. It's just that I don't care about that; I only care about protecting the copyleft parts.)