The question is whether these AI rewrites skirt around this by being a “clean rewrite”. Again, IANAL, but the proponents seem to argue that it is, while the detractors say that it is not a clear rewrite, or it may not be a clean rewrite in specific circumstances.
I’ve personally written GPL code, and then had a company who is selling a service come and ask for features, all the while never making any changes they have made to the codebase freely available back. It sucks, because I spent probably upwards of 1000 hours of work on it, all for no financial compensation, while the company is making money off of my work without giving me a single cent. Which they’re allowed to do, but again it sucks.
I’d like to continue to write the software, but after my paid work I have hardly any energy to work on it, and also, what’s the use? Not only am I never going to see a cent from it, but also the people who use it are making bank off of my free efforts. Additionally, LLMs are trained on it and used to then argue that I should be fired from my paid job as what I do can be replaced with AI slop.
The question is whether these AI rewrites skirt around this by being a “clean rewrite”. Again, IANAL, but the proponents seem to argue that it is, while the detractors say that it is not a clear rewrite, or it may not be a clean rewrite in specific circumstances.
Because LLMs count as tools under current case law (as weak as it is), if you end up in court you’ll have to argue against the fact that:
You saw copyrighted code
Using a tool, you created substantially similar code
The current legal fiction of “having one agent describe what the existing code does to a separate agent that implements it” which is roughly like clean-room reverse engineering, just doesn’t work without the strict separation that requires multiple people to be involved - you are tainted, so you cannot have any influence on the output, which you inherently have if you’re the one controlling the LLMs.
Look I’m not a lawyer. Your argument could be sound or not. In any case accepting these AI rewrites as clean room rewrites would basically render copyright worthless, and I doubt the courts will stand for that. Although I could be wrong
IANAL I think beyond “having the name in the code itself”, GPL has specific, legal requirements. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4577/does-gplv3-require-attribution
The question is whether these AI rewrites skirt around this by being a “clean rewrite”. Again, IANAL, but the proponents seem to argue that it is, while the detractors say that it is not a clear rewrite, or it may not be a clean rewrite in specific circumstances.
I’ve personally written GPL code, and then had a company who is selling a service come and ask for features, all the while never making any changes they have made to the codebase freely available back. It sucks, because I spent probably upwards of 1000 hours of work on it, all for no financial compensation, while the company is making money off of my work without giving me a single cent. Which they’re allowed to do, but again it sucks.
I’d like to continue to write the software, but after my paid work I have hardly any energy to work on it, and also, what’s the use? Not only am I never going to see a cent from it, but also the people who use it are making bank off of my free efforts. Additionally, LLMs are trained on it and used to then argue that I should be fired from my paid job as what I do can be replaced with AI slop.
Bit of a rant!
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Because LLMs count as tools under current case law (as weak as it is), if you end up in court you’ll have to argue against the fact that:
The current legal fiction of “having one agent describe what the existing code does to a separate agent that implements it” which is roughly like clean-room reverse engineering, just doesn’t work without the strict separation that requires multiple people to be involved - you are tainted, so you cannot have any influence on the output, which you inherently have if you’re the one controlling the LLMs.
score 1 · canonical
Look I’m not a lawyer. Your argument could be sound or not. In any case accepting these AI rewrites as clean room rewrites would basically render copyright worthless, and I doubt the courts will stand for that. Although I could be wrong
score 1 · canonical