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Copyrightability of LLM-generated code: Can we license “vibe code” into Free Software? (fsfe.org)

submitted 1 week ago by pylapp@programming.dev to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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[-] SparroHawc@piefed.world 3 points 6 days ago

If it's vibe coded, the person who wrote the prompt had minimal impact on the output. They can't, because they don't understand how it works. Their contribution is primarily limited to 1. writing a spec, which is often laughably vague, 2. testing the output to see if it works, and 3. if it doesn't work right, telling the AI to fix the problems.

This was also in response to the 'trust me bro' snide comment. I'm not going to go into detail for something that is practically sealioning.

[-] zenforyen@feddit.org 3 points 6 days ago

What you say applies to slop, not anyone using AI seriously. Which is a small minority, but still.

If you put in a lot of work, you might not be the author of the realization but you are author of the concept (assuming it is not trivial). Why should you not be able to protect your ideas?

What is the status of a movie director compared to the actors?

Who is usually mentioned when discussing whether the movie was well crafted or not?

The best actor cannot save a shitty plot.

[-] SparroHawc@piefed.world 3 points 6 days ago

You're thinking of patents, not copyright. You can't copyright an idea, only the implementation of an idea. I could spend years perfecting a play, but when a troupe performs that play, I don't own their performance.

And you underestimate the idiocy of self-proclaimed 'vibe coders'. Go into practically any FOSS community and see what they have to say about vibe-coded pull requests. The people making them have no clue what the code is doing, they're just chasing clout with minimal effort.

[-] Sandbar_Trekker@piefed.zip 3 points 6 days ago

That's really going to depend on how strictly you define "vibe coded". If that means that someone put in a single prompt and the LLM spit out an entire program, then yes, I doubt that would be copyrightable.

However, if the person "vibe coding" does understand how to program, and they use multiple prompts and organize the code to make a working product, then the code could be copyrightable by compilation:

https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf

[-] SparroHawc@piefed.world 2 points 6 days ago

That's a real big 'if'. Someone who understands and shapes the code isn't really vibe coding. I might still not agree with what they're doing, but it's not vibe coding if they can take responsibility for every line of code produced.