Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

While I agree with you regarding shady business practices, you're very conveniently skipping over the fact that open source licenses _REQUIRE_ attribution.


> While I agree with you regarding shady business practices, you're very conveniently skipping over the fact that open source licenses _REQUIRE_ attribution.

When you use the code as is or create a derivative work. The knowledge embodied by the code and encapsulated in an LLM doesn't strike me as needing to give attribution because the code the LLM would product doesn't match any particular open source code base.

At least that's my thinking. I'd be curious to see an example where you think attribution is necessary and how you would actually do it given an output from an LLM.


I answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49775387

I will continue to hold that position until such a time that we get a better answer than:

> we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models


I hear you, but I think you might miss my point, which is while LLMs are clearly trained on copyrighted material, what they produce (their output) is NOT a copy of a specific code snippet they were trained on in a way that you would say "that's a copy from this code base".


Open source also requires attribution for derivative works [1], not just verbatim copies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Derivative_work&o...


Thanks for that link to the definition and requirements for something to be considered a derivative work.

I think my interpretation, based on your link, holds: unless the LLM output (transformation) substantially bears the original source code author's creation and personality, there is nothing to give attribution to.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2027 batch! Applications are open till November 2.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: