@Gargron

I defend the FSF stance in general, but I reject this hypothetical. FSF vs AI-generated issues can be dealt with from a different perspective.

IN GENERAL Institutions function best when they stay within their proper domain. A hospital treats a wounded criminal without judging their crime; a public library lends books without vetting the patron's ideology. GNU Emacs is an infrastructure provider for free code, not an international human rights court. FSF philosophy is based on four freedoms and is artifact-centered. In its favor, it can be said to represent institutional neutrality and epistemic humility that should govern large, global public goods. Freedom 0 is treated as symmetric. Anyone can use, anyone can contribute.

IN THIS HYPOTHETICAL extreme, knowingly accepting stolen or coerced goods is hardly a neutral act even in the artifact-centered sphere of ethics. It is like accepting a donation of books into the library knowing that they were stolen. At minimum, the FSF should attribute credit to the slaves and refuse credit to the slavers if the work is already done.

FSF should be aware that AI/LLM-generated code can't be copyrighted. It subverts the FSF's legal shield. "Prompts are Not Authorship". In US, EU, and other jurisdictions AI-generated output can't be copyrighted. See US: https://mathstodon.xyz/@maxpool/117140242185472991 and EU https://mathstodon.xyz/@maxpool/117128107757895678

#GPL #FSF #copyright #ethics #philosophy

@Gargron “Why should software be free? Wrong Answers Only”

@Gargron in fact, in 1990's, the original point of free software was to get rid of Microsoft Windows. But that, too, was in the end about ethics...

@Gargron Always astounding how often people assume that everything outside their specialization is simply irrelevant. It is like solipsism but apply to concept instead of the self.

@Gargron it confuses me as to why this is surprising to prominent people. Capital-letter Free Software is about the paramount ethic to respect rights of the *user*, not the developer. It's entirely agnostic about the mode of production, in the frame that software exists as the products of labour under employment and is not necessarily the intellectual property of the contributor at the moment of creation.

Now the various vehicles for people who make software together, in the open, for each other, that's a different story.

But copyleft and Free Software is plain and simple a libertarian's hack to extend the right to private thought further to cover private computation. That doesn't make it a bad frame intrinsically, but it's failure to deliver beyond that is merely disappointed hopes, not a conceptual flaw.

The fine print of Free Software never promised solidarity on which to build community. It only defined what happened when solidarity and goodwill was lost, which allowed people to go along for a time. We need other ways to articulate real solidarity to avoid the enmity of frustrated natural alliances.

@Gargron have corps started putting lead in paint and gasoline again?

@Gargron

While the scenario hypothesized by the GNU maintainer is unfortunate, and quite tone deaf at that, it is also important to note that the use of LLMs is nothing like participating in actual slavery. Also, systems of ethics are relativistic in nature, so unless one wants to fall into a "my ethics are better than yours" trap, one must keep this in mind. "Free software" means different things to different people.

@Gargron I want every contribution I ever made to the FSF when I was young and naive back, adjusted for inflation, with interest.

@Gargron https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/ai-free-foss-alternatives#bsd-based

@Gargron let's do some ethicsmaxxing

@Gargron It turned out to be about corporations getting a lot of people to work for free ... it's not a big leap from that to actually owning the means of production outright and making them work for free.

@Gargron are we going to ignore that computers are built with products of child labor in conditions more akin to slavery than anything else?

@Gargron
Absolutely 100%, thank you for pointing out what shouldn't need to be pointed but JFHC

@Gargron great question. i got involved in FOSS through activism on *other* topics, and i suspect i am not alone in that