By this logic, shouldn't any code using an open-source framework or language also be open source? Even before AI, devs learned from Stack Overflow and plenty of open source code.
You're confusing writing code with software engineering. Devs never just wrote code, they took ownership of the outcome. Business owners put their money on the line for product decisions.
To say that just because devs or founders use AI to write code, the code is no longer their intellectual property is ridiculous. Humans take responsibility for the outcome and are willing to accept the losses. AI can't do that. AI doesn't have any stakes in the output it generates, humans do.
A fair number of FOSS licenses were interpreted this way. The popular migration away from GPLv3 (might’ve been v4?) towards MIT, LGPL, etc had more than one cause (a huge one was the rapid sectoral commercialization; the decline of RMS’s reputation may have contributed, etc), but a big one was the potential interpretation of new GPL as being overly viral and “license-infecting” only slightly related software assets rather than wholly derivative ones.
For me, it's the latter: the GPL feels overbearing and patronizing, and I don't want some dependency to dictate under which terms I can release my own software. I pay the community back by using MIT whenever I open-source something. This feels more "free" than RMS's view of freedom.
I know that many people would disagree with me on this, but thankfully I'm free to choose what license I consider "free".
> I don't want some dependency to dictate under which terms I can release my own software.
Then you shouldn't release it under the MIT license, which has restrictions and requirements on speech. You have to release it to the public domain. Pretending MIT doesn't dictate terms under which you can release your own software is just a fantasy.
> Devs never just wrote code, they took ownership of the outcome. Business owners put their money on the line for product decisions.
Does the same thing apply to Mickey Mouse? Would you say it's fine to use Disney characters in my own creations, as long as I take ownership of the outcome and put my money on the line for product decisions?
I am not saying that taking responsibility gives you the license to violate copyrights.
My point is that devs have always learned from open-source code and the internet, then used that knowledge to write their own proprietary software. Why should it be any different when AI learns from the same sources and produces new code?
[−]moritzwarhier · 2026-11-15 Sun 16:04 UTC ·
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Humans will often fail to take responsibility for derivative works though when they don't know what work the output is derivative of, and how strongly.
And that's assuming they want to make clear what they are building on.
The stakes in the output go both ways: wanting to profit from IP and risking liability because of violating IP licenses.
What you're saying is already the status quo, but reality is that LLMs make it so easy to "paraphrase" code or simply .. ideas, too... so that the whole concept of IP is eroding. Because the sheer scale makes it almost impossible to distinguish specific things that cross the line from "learning from" to "copying IP".
I'm not really taking a specific stance here but acting as if it would be a solved problem seems hard to believe to me, especially since it is not a new discussion.
I thinl you could argue that the solution is that copyright or IP concepts are not working anymore, something many people already concluded before the LLM and AI explosion of the 2020s.
But that's not the state of the current law, right?
In addition, your claim that the user of an AI system is the only person who has any "stakes" also seems questionable to me, because after all, we are talking about output that the AI user already paid an AI company for to generate it.
Whether if using ML models as a form of IP laundering, is legal or not, still seems to be an open question. It's not ridiculous at all. If I lossy-compress Harry Potter, then unzip it in a way that mixes some words, is that fair use? Should I be financially rewarded for my "work"? Is this work now mine? If it is legal, why not just go through every book in this kind of automated fashion and start selling them as my own?
My question is still the same. Human devs have learned from open-source projects, books and code on the internet then used opensource frameworks to create proprietary software logic.
Now just because same devs use AI to create code doesn't mean they should be banned from creating or owning a proprietary software.
Open source code: reproducing and publishing the code without following the license is a copyright violation. Instruction a computer programme to do the same thing should still be a copyright violation. Since this is the internet, I need to state the obvious: trivial code (defined on a case-by-case basis) is not copyrighted.
Books: the author expects you to reproduce their work, as long as it’s not another book. You wouldn’t get many sales if you sued someone for using the things you taught them.
The internet: actually the same as open source code. StackOverflow enforces a specific licensing clause to allow people to use code you provide. People who write posts that say “use this code to fix this problem,” are implicitly providing a license, too.
I don’t think using an LLM to generate code should remove its copyright but it also doesn’t remove the responsibility to not violate copyright.
The difference is the scale. Yeah, some mice and small birds are eaten by bigger predators. Doesn't mean that introducing cats to that ecosystem won't be disastrous.
Same with the ecosystem of creative work. Will some humans be inspired by my code or other artifacts? Sure. Does it mean it's fine to introduce an automated 1000 times more effective plagiarism machine to that ecosystem? Probably not. Certainly not if avoiding destroying the ecosystem is your consideration.
What is transformative enough to be legal is fuzzy. At the end of the day, it only matters how the courts rule. I do know that the amount of actual mechanical change has less bearing on determining if the work was transformative. There are cases where you can copy 90% of a code base verbatim legally, and there are cases where no code is copied verbatim and it is a copyright violation. What you are describing most likely would not fly in court.
[−]throawayonthe · 2026-11-15 Sun 16:27 UTC ·
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more like
By this logic, shouldn't any code using a copyleft framework or language also be copyleft?
> By this logic, shouldn't any code using an open-source framework or language also be open source? Even before AI, devs learned from Stack Overflow and plenty of open source code.
You're confusing writing code with software engineering. Devs never just wrote code, they took ownership of the outcome. Business owners put their money on the line for product decisions.
To say that just because devs or founders use AI to write code, the code is no longer their intellectual property is ridiculous. Humans take responsibility for the outcome and are willing to accept the losses. AI can't do that. AI doesn't have any stakes in the output it generates, humans do.
I know that many people would disagree with me on this, but thankfully I'm free to choose what license I consider "free".
Then you shouldn't release it under the MIT license, which has restrictions and requirements on speech. You have to release it to the public domain. Pretending MIT doesn't dictate terms under which you can release your own software is just a fantasy.
But please don't forget about the users. Only the copyleft licenses guarantee (legally) that the user gets to enjoy the freedoms, too.
Does the same thing apply to Mickey Mouse? Would you say it's fine to use Disney characters in my own creations, as long as I take ownership of the outcome and put my money on the line for product decisions?
My point is that devs have always learned from open-source code and the internet, then used that knowledge to write their own proprietary software. Why should it be any different when AI learns from the same sources and produces new code?
And that's assuming they want to make clear what they are building on.
The stakes in the output go both ways: wanting to profit from IP and risking liability because of violating IP licenses.
What you're saying is already the status quo, but reality is that LLMs make it so easy to "paraphrase" code or simply .. ideas, too... so that the whole concept of IP is eroding. Because the sheer scale makes it almost impossible to distinguish specific things that cross the line from "learning from" to "copying IP".
I'm not really taking a specific stance here but acting as if it would be a solved problem seems hard to believe to me, especially since it is not a new discussion.
I thinl you could argue that the solution is that copyright or IP concepts are not working anymore, something many people already concluded before the LLM and AI explosion of the 2020s.
But that's not the state of the current law, right?
In addition, your claim that the user of an AI system is the only person who has any "stakes" also seems questionable to me, because after all, we are talking about output that the AI user already paid an AI company for to generate it.
edit: word choice
Now just because same devs use AI to create code doesn't mean they should be banned from creating or owning a proprietary software.
In fact, current US law says AI output cannot be copyrighted.
Open source code: reproducing and publishing the code without following the license is a copyright violation. Instruction a computer programme to do the same thing should still be a copyright violation. Since this is the internet, I need to state the obvious: trivial code (defined on a case-by-case basis) is not copyrighted.
Books: the author expects you to reproduce their work, as long as it’s not another book. You wouldn’t get many sales if you sued someone for using the things you taught them.
The internet: actually the same as open source code. StackOverflow enforces a specific licensing clause to allow people to use code you provide. People who write posts that say “use this code to fix this problem,” are implicitly providing a license, too.
I don’t think using an LLM to generate code should remove its copyright but it also doesn’t remove the responsibility to not violate copyright.
Same with the ecosystem of creative work. Will some humans be inspired by my code or other artifacts? Sure. Does it mean it's fine to introduce an automated 1000 times more effective plagiarism machine to that ecosystem? Probably not. Certainly not if avoiding destroying the ecosystem is your consideration.
By this logic, shouldn't any code using a copyleft framework or language also be copyleft?
and yes duh
No, that's not how copyright works.
And I won't comment the rest.