dithered_djinn (u/dithered_djinn)

dithered_djinn commented on MAME 0.276 mamedev.org/?p=549... · Posted by u/chungy

moomin · 5 months ago

It’s got a LinnDrum?! That is awesome!

"Most of the digital functionality is emulated. Audio is not yet emulated."

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/13404/files#diff-f78737...

dithered_djinn commented on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies thelibre.news/foss-infras... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

pabs3 · 6 months ago

On setting all software free, indeed, thats the point made in the post by mjg59. None of the AI companies train on their own proprietary software though, which is telling.

On Affero, that was indeed definitely needed, although some folks on HN seem to think that privately modifying code is allowed by copyright, even if the modified version is outputting a public website, thus what the license says is irrelevant. That seems bogus to me, but seems a loophole if it is legit. Anyway, personally I think that people should simply just never use SaaS, nor web apps. It also doesn't help with data portability.

I'd go further and advocate for legally mandated source code escrow for copyright validity, and GPL like rights to the code once public, which would happen if the software is off the market for N years.

dithered_djinn · 6 months ago

> I'd go further and advocate for legally mandated source code escrow for copyright validity, and GPL like rights to the code once public, which would happen if the software is off the market for N years.

I agree 100%.

dithered_djinn commented on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies thelibre.news/foss-infras... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

pabs3 · 6 months ago

I absolutely agree with you that the current big LLMs enable an attack on all FOSS licenses and especially copyleft ones. That doesn't mean that one couldn't create LLM code generators in a respectful way. Do license analysis on the input code and then train separate models on the different license buckets, with the outputs from each model considered derivative works of the input corpus.

Also I don't think a restriction on the FSF's freedom 2 "The freedom to study how the program works" based on what tools you use and how you use them fits with FSF philosophy, nor do I think it is appropriate. You should be able to run whatever analysis tools you have available to study the program. Being able to ingest a program into a local LLM model and then ask questions about the codebase before you understand it yourself is valuable. Or aren't a programmer and or aren't familiar with the language used, then a local LLM could help you make the changes needed to add a new feature. In that situation LLMs can enable practical software freedom, for those who can't afford to pay/convince a programmer to make the changes they want.

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

In addition, OpenAI clearly do not respect copyrights and licenses in general, so would ignore any anti-AI clauses, which would make them ineffective and thus pointless. So, I think we should tackle the LLM problem through the law, and not through licenses. That is already happening with various caselaw in software, writing, artwork etc.

It isn't possible or practical to change the existing body of Free Software to use new anti-AI clauses anyway.https://juliareda.eu/2021/07/github-copilot-is-not-infringin...

BTW, LLMs could also in theory be used to licensewash proprietary software, see "Does free software benefit from ML models being derived works of training data?" by Matthew Garret:

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/57615.html

dithered_djinn · 6 months ago

I see what you are saying and don't completely disagree. I however feel that the spirit of free software is to set all software free. From that it follows, that if we are going to follow the current route of complete disregard for authorship and licenses, then the free software movement should continue fighting to liberate all software in existence. In other words, those LLM's that you mention that are to enable software freedom for users who cannot code themselves, in a fair world, they would be trained with both free and proprietary software. After all, a derivative work from a proprietary software should also be subject to fair use. The output produced by the LLM wouldn't necessarily be a literal copy-paste of any particular proprietary software... as the models would just be "learning" from them. The company could just continue doing business as usual, build on their brand and yada yada yada.

Regarding the licensing, I'll restate my point that the Affero license was created precisely in a moment where the existing licenses could no longer uphold the freedoms that the Free Software Foundation set out to defend. A change of license was the right solution at that particular point in time and, if it worked then, I think we can all agree that there is at least a precedent that such a course of action might work and should at the very least be considered as a possible solution for today's problems.

That said, my own personal view is more aligned with demanding the nation states to pressure big corporations so that currently closed-source software becomes at least open-source (either by law, or simply by stopping using it and invest their budget in free alternatives instead). Note I said open source and not free. I just would like to read their code and feed it to my LLM's :)

dithered_djinn commented on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies thelibre.news/foss-infras... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

pabs3 · 6 months ago

Such a license would not meet the Open Source Iniative's Open Source Definition:

https://opensource.org/osd/

dithered_djinn · 6 months ago

That might indeed apply to open source software.

If we instead adopt the view of free software (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....), the fact that OpenAI and other large corporations train their large-language models behind closed doors - with no disclosure of their training corpus - effectively represents the biggest attack on GPL-licensed code to date.

No evidence suggests that OpenAI and others exclude GPL-licensed repositories from their training sets. And nothing prevents the incorporation of GPL-licensed code into proprietary codebases. Note that a few papers have documented the regurgitation of literal text snippets by large language models (one example: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.12367v2).

To me, this seems like the LLM-version of using coin-mixing to obscure the trail of Bitcoin transactions in the blockchain. The current situation also reminds me of how the generalization of the SaaS model led to the creation of the Affero GPL license (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html).

LLM's enable the circumvention of the spirit of free software licenses, as well as of the legal mechanisms to enforce them.

dithered_djinn commented on Show HN: Font Pair – I was wasting hours choosing fonts, so I built this github.com/CodeWithNeer/F... · Posted by u/CodeWithNeer

dithered_djinn · 6 months ago

Kudos for writing such a handy tool! I love the fact that it is self-contained in one file.

Adding the option to filter by monospaced typefaces would make it even more amazing, imho. I would totally use a version of it that had the ability to "pair" three fonts: heading font, body font, and coding font.

The cherry on top would be enabling support for locally-installed fonts.

Thanks for sharing!

dithered_djinn commented on Popular gut probiotic craps out in randomized controlled trial arstechnica.com/health/20... · Posted by u/zdw

selimthegrim · a year ago

It was about the rinse aids in commercial dishwashers at commercial dose levels. Residential levels were not shown to be harmful.

dithered_djinn · a year ago

Here is the full text of that article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009167492...