Perhaps code licensing is going to become more similar to music.
e.g. Somebody wrote a library, and then you had an LLM implement it in a new language.
You didn't come up with the idea for whatever the library does, and you didn't "perform" the new implementation. You're neither writer nor performer, just the person who requested a new performance. You're basically a club owner who hired a band to cover some tunes. There's a lot involved in running a club, just like there's a fair bit involved in operating a LLM, but none of that gives you rights over the "composition". If you want to make money off of that performance, you need to pay the writer and/or satisfy whatever terms and conditions they've made the library available under.
IANAL, so I don't even know what species of worms are inside this can I've opened up. It seems sensible, to me, that running somebody else's work through a LLM shouldn't give you something that you can then claim complete control over.
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Edit: For the sake of this argument, let's pretend we're somewhere with sensible music copyright laws, and not the weird piano-roll derived lunacy that currently exists in the U.S..
I find the music example very illuminating, thanks!
Looking into US Copyright for songs there are two different kinds:
- one for the composition, the musical idea, music, lyrics.
-one for the recording, the music taking shape in a format that someone can listen to
I don't think this is how software licenses work, as they cover the code itself, rather than the ideas (the specific recording rather than the composition, in the music example), but it's an interesting way to frame why using LLM this way is, if not illegal, at least unethical.
Sans contract? Probably like if I take a photo of you holding a copy of a recent book. I own copy right of the photo. The author still has copyright of the book.
e.g. Somebody wrote a library, and then you had an LLM implement it in a new language.
You didn't come up with the idea for whatever the library does, and you didn't "perform" the new implementation. You're neither writer nor performer, just the person who requested a new performance. You're basically a club owner who hired a band to cover some tunes. There's a lot involved in running a club, just like there's a fair bit involved in operating a LLM, but none of that gives you rights over the "composition". If you want to make money off of that performance, you need to pay the writer and/or satisfy whatever terms and conditions they've made the library available under.
IANAL, so I don't even know what species of worms are inside this can I've opened up. It seems sensible, to me, that running somebody else's work through a LLM shouldn't give you something that you can then claim complete control over.
---------
Edit: For the sake of this argument, let's pretend we're somewhere with sensible music copyright laws, and not the weird piano-roll derived lunacy that currently exists in the U.S..