This article is talking about a book though, not software.

"Sam Williams and Richard Stallman's Free as in freedom: Richard Stallman's crusade for free software"

"GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL). This is a free license allowing use of the work for any purpose without payment."

I'm not familiar with this license or how it compares to their software licenses, but it sounds closer to a public domain license.

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kennywinker 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It sounds that way a bit from the one sentence. But that’s not the case at all.

> 4. MODIFICATIONS

> You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:

Etc etc.

In short, it is a copyleft license. You must also license derivative works under this license.

Just fyi, the gnu fdl is (unsurprisingly) available for free online - so if you want to know what it says, you can read it!

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mjg59 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And the judgement said that the training was fair use, but that the duplication might be an infringement. The GFDL doesn't restrict duplication, only distribution, so if training on GFDLed material is fair use and not the creation of a derivative work then there's no damage.

	▲	leni536 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Last time I checked online LLMs distribute parts of their training corpus when you prompt them.

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onion2k 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For this to stand up in court you'd need to show that an LLM is distributing "a modified version of the document".

If I took a book and cut it up into individual words (or partial words even), and then used some of the words with words from every other book to write a new book, it'd be hard to argue that I'm really "distributing the first book", even if the subject of my book is the same as the first one.

This really just highlights how the law is a long way behind what's achievable with modern computing power.

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ndsipa_pomu 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Presumably, a suitable prompt could get the LLM to produce whole sections of the book which would demonstrate that the LLM contains a modified version.

	▲	p_l 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, and for practical purposes the current consensus (and in case of EU, the law) is that only said document would be converted by FDL

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rcdwealth 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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karel-3d 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

FDL is famously annoying.

wikipedia used to be under FDL and they lobbied FSF to allow an escape hatch to Commons for a few months, because FDL was so annoying.