Isn't llama-dl just like a human reading information on the Internet and learning from it, only faster?

That is what we have been told when they stole our open source software.

Readability is one of the key goals of open-source software.

That said, the inclusion of GPL-licensed code in training sets may yet force the release of those models under the GPL.

But the GPL allows for learning from it. But is the learning limited to humans? Is the learning process a way of modification?

I'd really like to see this tested at a court.

Can you even call it "learning"? We use the word as a metaphor, but it's really not the same thing as what a human does.

I've got disappointing news for you. The copyright protecting your open source software never applied to its function, only its creative expression, and only insofar as the expression was separable from its function.

How is there no financial damage? If models start replacing existing business cases but are only able to do so because they were trained on copyrighted data relating to those business cases, then the financial damage should be very obvious.

Damage isn't enough, you also need liability.

If I make a better search engine than Google and take away their ads business, I have damaged them, but I am not liable.

The argument here is that Facebook does not actually own LLaMA, because they don't own the training data, they didn't have humans curate the training data in a creative way, and the actual training process is purely mechanical. If LLaMA is not copyrightable then you cannot be liable for copying it.

I think liability is easier to prove because they breached license to use the source code against license. Thats clearly their action.

But financial damage on programs distributed for free is...nothing. So even if you sue, what are you going to get out of them?

I wonder if you can sue for some form of specific performance and cause them to remove your and all other equally licensed code from their training

> But financial damage on programs distributed for free is…nothing.

Not necessarily.

For instance, if the program is distributed free for a limited set of purposes under a license, but available for a negotiated license (with payment) for other purposes, then the reasonable market value of a license without the restriction would be actual damages.

1) because open source software has no cost, and

2) the value of machine learning training on any one particular piece of source code also approaches zero

If a model replaces a business case for software you were giving away for free, how are you financially harmed? Even if you won a lawsuit you can't demonstrate any financial impact of software you give away for free.

Open source software is famously not costless (gratis) software, so the premise of the argument is false. I may for instance benefit from people using my software and then obtaining paid support from me, or using paid add-ons (the "open core" model).

So sue and see if you can recoup your costs. You won't, though.

k

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you require financial damages to sue for a violation of the license. Standing is conferred from having your (artificial legal) monopoly on the work as the author violated, not necessarily financially.

This is the whole principle that allows the GPL to work.

That aside, we should really stop misusing "steal". Not only is it legally inaccurate (Dowling versus United States), it's semantically inaccurate as well. The conflation of that with mere copyright infringement is a campaign driven by bad faith actors.

You can sue but you can't extract anything from them for violating the license, so its toothless and a net loss for the person or org suing.