this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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open source != no license restrictions
i think, he's got a point, tho
is ai open source, when the trainig data isn't?
as i understand, right now: yes, it's enough, that the code is open source. and i think that's a big problem
i'm not deep into ai, so correct me if i'm wrong.
Software licenses that "discriminate against any person or group of persons" or "restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor" are not open source. Llama's license doesn't just restrict Llama from being used by companies with "700 million monthly active users", it also restricts Llama from being used to "create, train, fine tune, or otherwise improve an AI model" or being used for military purposes (although Meta made an exception for the US military). Therefore, Llama is not open source.
So as I understand it, under the OSI definition of the word, anything distributed under a copyleft licence would not be open source.
So all software with GNU GPL, for example.
That's incorrect. GPL licenses are open source.
The GPL does not restrict anyone from selling or distributing GPL-licensed software as a component of an aggregate software distribution. For example, all Linux distributions contain GPL-licensed software, as the Linux kernel is GPLv2.
Open source software doesn't, by definition, place restrictions on usage.
Clauses like "you can use this software freely except in specific circumstances" fly against that. Open source licenses usually have very little to say about what the software should be used for, and usually just as an affirmation that you can use the software for whatever you want.
I don't think any of our classical open licenses from the 80s and 90s were ever created with AI in mind. They are inadequate. An update or new one is needed.
Stallman, spit out the toe cheese and get to work.
The OSI have had a go: https://opensource.org/ai/open-source-ai-definition
To note is that this definition was discussed for awhile with many engineers in the AI field, including from Meta.
I understand the same way and I think there's a lot of gray area which makes it hard to just say "the data also needs to be open source for the code to be open source". What would that mean for postgreSQL? Does it magically turn closed source if I don't share what's in my db? What would it mean to every open source software that stores and uses that stored data?
I'm not saying the AI models shouldn't be open source, I'm saying reigning in the models needs to be done very carefully because it's very easy to overreach and open up a whole other can of worms.
PostgreSQL is not built on top of the data you host in your db. It's not a valid comparison.