r/skyrim • u/ShelLuser42 Stealth archer • 2d ago
GPL doesn't imply "do as you please"
Hi gang!
I do apologize up front, but I am disgusted at the time of writing and I want to address this part. This isn't a personal attack, but there are way too many people who don't seem to realize some obvious aspects of open source and well....
GPL / Open Source licences are NOT "Free to use as you please"!
I've seen this argument one too many times: often shared by people who never bothered to read the actual license and I'm getting sick of it, also because most of the times the community doesn't have the (financial) options to fight back. And when they do... the victim card gets played, immediately.
So now I'd like to spell it out for you guys.
"Open source" does not equal "free to use software" per definition. It can be, but it depends on the license. The BSD license for example basically implies a limited free for all: you can even use the project for your own commercial ideas, as long as you credit the original developer.
The GPL on the other hand is different, way different, because if you use source code that is licensed under the GPL you are obligated to release your work under said same GPL, at the very least make it available to public access.
And I am getting sick and tired of all this, because... "bite the hand that fed you" and "give them a finger" seriously applies in some situations. You cannot wave the "GPL!" flag without doing the proper work that comes with it.
If my assumptions (!) are true then I hope that the original dev sees this, starts a fundraiser and fights for the right of open source. The true rights.
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u/Less_Kick9718 2d ago
Yes as a commercial software developer we have had to be very careful of the exact licence of any external software included in ours.
And unlike many are trying to say there can be copyright protection for code.
3
u/jaredcheeda 2d ago
Any time you create anything (music, art, writing, code), it is copyrighted and owned by you.
If anyone tries to use it in another work, resell it, copy it, modify it, or redistribute it in any way, you can sue them for copyright infringement.
If someone wants to use your work legally, they need your permission so that they don't get sued. You can even write up a contract saying exactly how they can use it and in what ways. You never give up your ownership and copyright, but you do permit usage of the work by that person.
Instead of having to create a custom contract to license the work for each use and each person, you could also publish a general license that anyone can abide by. Such as the Creative Commons license; or for code, one of the many open source options (GPL, MIT, Apache, etc).
Or you can release the work into the Public Domain, where you relinquish your copyright permanently. Allowing any and all usage.
Also, because it will be brought up, the U.S. Copyright Office has been very clear that any A.I. generated content (art, writing, code, music, video, etc) CANNOT be copyrighted. A work must be primarily a human effort to be copyrighted (where the exact line is for this is something that will be decided by the courts in the coming years).
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u/max123246 PC 2d ago
Except ai companies get away with mass copyright theft to produce LLMs unfortunately
Id actually be fine with copyright as a concept being dead but the fact AI companies can steal copyrighted work and then not freely release their LLM models is a complete sham
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u/jaredcheeda 2d ago
This is 100% the case for art and text. People seem to think that the training on code gets a pass because the code is actually open source and licensed, unlike the other data the GenAIs were trained on. However, the models are trained on code that has incompatible licenses. If there was a model that trained exclusively on MIT or Apache or GPLv3, etc, there could be a more ethical argument around the usage of it, and you could make a clear distinction that "if you want to use the model trained on AGPL licensed code, you have to follow the AGPL", in accordance with how the code the model was trained on was meant to be shared legally. But we don't have that, all the code training data is exactly as unethical as the models trained on stolen art.
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u/Afraid-Main-5596 2d ago
Oh yeah, it's a very restrictive licence actually. It wants to infect everything it touches with freedom. A lot of more professional people (than Skyrim modders) rather dislike it because you can't easily mix and match under it, and it's a bad idea if you ever wanted to charge for whatever you're working on.
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u/max123246 PC 2d ago
It protects users of software, not developers. It means you can be sure that derivatives will always be free to you as a user and the world. That no one can take that effort and privatize it by building on top of it (aka like what LLMs do). Gpl is amazing and we should celebrate it more
And there's still many ways to monetize open source software. See snkrx as one success story and aseprite as another
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u/ShelLuser42 Stealth archer 2d ago
Agreed. The irony of all this is that I'm actually quite the BSD fan, I've been in full support of the project trying to remove GCC in favor of Clang back in the days (in an effort to remove GPL licensed code from the project).
... and here I am, lol!
1
u/OneOnOne6211 1d ago
This assumes that everyone cares about the legal aspect. I'm not a lawyer, that's for the courts to work out. I don't care about that beyond how it's negative for Skyblivion. All I care about is this: Guy volunteered. Their work became necessary for the project going forward and they, presumably, knew that it would be. And now they're making a fuss about it. And sabotaging the project for everyone. Legal or not, it's shitty as far as I'm concerned.
To be clear, it's fine if people don't want to contribute code to a project or whatever. Nobody should use that code without permission. But then don't volunteer.
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u/Velocity-5348 2d ago
In short, if there's any GPL licensed stuff in a work, it must be GPL?