>“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Being able to learn from the code is a core part of the ideology embedded into the GPL. Not only that, but LLMs learning from code is fair use.

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catlifeonmars 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Being able to learn from the code is a core part of the ideology embedded into the GPL.

I have to imagine this ideology was developed with humans in mind.

> but LLMs learning from code is fair use

If by “fair use” you mean the legal term of art, that question is still very much up in the air. If by “fair use” you mean “I think it is fair” then sure, that’s an opinion you’re entitled to have.

	▲	charcircuit 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>question is still very much up in the air It is not up in the air at all. It's completely transformative.

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jeroenhd 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That freedom for many free licenses comes with the caveat that you provide basic attribution and the same freedom to your users.

LLMs don't (cannot, by design) provide attribution, nor do LLM users have the freedom to run most of these models themselves.

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charcircuit 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That is if you redistribute or make a derivative work. Applying learnings you made from such software does not require such attribution.

	▲	pessimizer 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		In the first sentence "you" actually refers to you, a person, in the second you're intentionally cheating and applying it to a machine doing a mechanical transformation. One so mechanical that different LLMs trained on the same material would have output that closely resembles each other. The only indispensable part is the resource you're pirating. A resource that was given to you under the most generous of terms, which you ignored and decided to be guided by a purpose that you've assigned to those terms that embodies an intention that has been specifically denied. You do this because it allows you to do what you want to do. It's motivated "reasoning." Without this "FOSS is for learning" thing you think overrules the license, you are no more justified in training off of it without complying with the terms than training on pirated Microsoft code without complying with their terms. People who work at Microsoft learn on Microsoft code, too, but you don't feel entitled to that.