My current position is that AI companies should be taxed and the money should be distributed to open source developers.

There is a strong legal basis for this to happen because if you read the MIT license, which is one of the most common and most permissive licenses, it clearly states that the code is made available for any "Person" to use and distribute. An AI agent is not a person so technically it was never given the right to use the code for itself... It was not even given permission to read the copyrighted code, let alone ingest it, modify it and redistribute it. Moreover, it is a requirement of the MIT license that the MIT copyright notice be included in all copies or substantial portions of the software... Which agents are not doing in spite of distributing substantial portions of open source code verbatim, especially when considered in aggregate.

Moreover, the fact that a lot of open source devs have changed their views on open source since AI reinforces the idea that they never consented to their works being consumed, transformed and redistributed by AI in the first place. So the violation applies both in terms of the literal wording of the licenses and also based on intent.

Moreover, the usage of code by AI goes beyond just a copyright violation of the code/text itself; they appropriated ideas and concepts, without giving due credit to their originators so there is a deeper ethical component involved that we don't have a system to protect human innovation from AI. Human IP is completely unprotected.

That said, I think most open source devs would support AI innovation, but just not at their expense with zero compensation.

▲

2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

foxglacier 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> they appropriated ideas and concepts, without giving due credit to their originators so there is a deeper ethical component

No there isn't. We're all free to copy each other's ideas and concepts and not give any credit to their "originators" who aren't usually even the first people to think of them but just the previous person in the chain of copying ideas. That's how progress happens. No we should not inhibit our use of knowledge because every idea "belongs" to somebody.

I'm not talking about copyright here, which is different and doesn't usually protect ideas and concepts anyway, at least none that are useful.

	▲	jongjong an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That's why I alluded to the fact that this was more of an ethical matter than a legal matter. Though it should be a legal matter. It's just hard to measure, for the reasons you suggested... Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to approximate something fairer. We've crossed a threshold whereby economic value creation is not fairly rewarded. The economy became a kind of winner-takes-all game of who can convince people to pay for stuff and lock them in first... Or who can wedge themselves first between large pre-existing corporate money flows. It's like the office politics, bureaucracy and corruption that everyone hates has become the core reward mechanism of the economy. It was never designed that way but a combination of factors exacerbated by underlying system flaws and perverse incentives got us there. There's already way too much false advertising. The winners of this game are those who can sell a dream . It doesn't matter if they don't deliver because by the time people figure it out, they already sold their startup and onto other things. Everyone is kept in a constant state of chasing the next big thing and it doesn't solve any problems. Human potential is just wasted on creating elaborate illusions which ultimately satisfy no one.