Prior to LLM the concept of "Open Source" could co-exist with "Free Software" - one was a more pragmatic view of how to develop software, the other a political activist position of how code powering our world should be.

AI has laid bare the difference.

Open Source is significantly impacted. Business models based on it are affected. And those who were not taking the political position find that they may not prefer the state of the world.

Free software finds itself, at worst, a bit annoyed (need to figure out the slop problem), and at best, an ally in AI - the amount of free software being built right now for people to use is very high.

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tjr 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I’ve seen different opinions. Can LLM-generated software be licensed under the GPL?

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bonoboTP 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Your question has nothing to do with the GPL. If your concern is that the code may count as derivative work of existing code then you also can't use that code in a proprietary way, under any license. But that probably only applies if the LLM regurgitated a substantial amount of copyrighted code into your codebase.

	▲	tjr 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fair; that was an example instance. People interested in “Free software” rather than “open source” seem to often favor the GPL, though other licensing options also count as “free software”. But in any case, the question really refers to, can the LLM-generated software be copyrighted? If not, it can’t be put under any particular license.

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hcayless 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If it can’t be copyrighted, then no. Licenses rely on the copyright holder’s right to grant the license. But that would also mean it’d be essentially public domain. I’m not sure there’s really settled legal opinion on this yet. Iirc it can’t be patented.

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anilgulecha 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Can you link to them?

The way the world is currently working is code created by someone (using AI) is being dealt with as if it was authored by that someone. This is across companies and FOSS. I think it's going to settle with this pattern.