Re: Help building Pen.el (GPT for emacs)

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-07-23 22:34]:
> > Here are references disputing how "it cannot be true":
> 
> You take everything you read in these blogs for granted?  Did you
> actually see the original code which these allude to?

In case of Copilot, Github admits:
https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitation

"This investigation demonstrates that GitHub Copilot can quote a body
of code verbatim, but that it rarely does so, and when it does, it
mostly quotes code that everybody quotes, and mostly at the beginning
of a file, as if to break the ice.This investigation demonstrates that
GitHub Copilot can quote a body of code verbatim, but that it rarely
does so, and when it does, it mostly quotes code that everybody
quotes, and mostly at the beginning of a file, as if to break the
ice."

And fact that it is "rare" does not make it a less problem for
copyright purposes as the new author cannot know which part of the
code has used "rare" verbatim.

> > Question is very particular, specific and concrete:
> > ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
> > 
> > How does Pen.el and background AI services ensure of licensing
> > compliance?
> > 
> > I would appreciate if you find solution to that or stay on that
> > subject, as if I am wrong or right is not relevant, what I wish is to
> > have assurance that it is free software. Prove me wrong by providing
> > exact references in not only on country's law but also other
> > countries' laws, the lows that make it legal, or how otherwise the
> > legality of such code is justified and how users may get free
> > software.
> 
> I'm sorry, but I don't work for you.  If you have problems with using
> code from these services, then the onus is on you to do the research
> and make up your own mind.  The discussion here is not about the code
> these services give their users, it's whether and how Emacs can make
> use of those services.  Emacs allows the user to write proprietary
> code, and there's no legal issues when the user does that.  Emacs also
> allows the user to copy someone else's code without permission, and
> that's not a problem for Emacs when the user does that.

If you don't wish to correspond, don't, you are free. 

I have never said nor implied "you work for me" and I cannot see how
is that relevant to the question. If you participate in discussion and
respond to my question relating to licensing compliance, then provide
a reference justifying its legality. Or simply say you don't have
such. Your employment is not subject of my question nor relevant.

I am not user of proprietary software and I don't consider options of
writing proprietary software. Neither I am participating in discussion
to foster ideas of creation of proprietary software.

I am free software user and for that specific case I am interested how
the licensing issue is solved.

However, my question is at least answered by my online research as I
have already found the refrences:

1. Julia Reda's reference; and

2. OpenAI_RFC-84-FR-58141.pdf
https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OpenAI_RFC-84-FR-58141.pdf

Conclusions are:

- legal justifications exists for US jurisdiction as the companies
  providing the AI are strong enough to find their ways, they are
  playing on the card as given in references above; as somebody
  already said, I doubt they would use "fair use" doctrine if the AI
  would be trained on proprietary software such as Windows;

- conflict is serious and it is out there among the people and remains
  unsolved; AI has been trained on GPL and other free software and is
  used by corporations to generate new code without attributions;
  people complain that it is misuse of intentions of authors; 

- overall international legal situation is thus unclear, especially
  considering that free software spans the whole world, not just the
  US jurisdiction, as what may work within US is not same among all
  jurisdictions;

> > As long as you don't tackle those subjects there is no legal solution
> > for Pen.el and background AI to be used with assurance that software
> > is truly free software.
> 
> You confuse "free software" with "software being used to write free
> programs".  They are not the same.

Maybe I have expressed myself in such way as not to get the point
understood. It must be so, as I have finally found the first legal
references myself. 

For Pen.el I have never made any relevance to legality question I
made, and I have the pen.el repository over here and license is
clear. Never mentioned it.

I have not made reference to "software being used to write free
programs" as a server side service I did not tackle that, it is most
probably proprietary software or some versions could be free
software. But that is not relevant.

What is at hand is:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1. There is pool of GPL and other free software which authors expect
   compliance to their licenses;

2. Large corporation is trying to use "fair use" doctrine on the pool
   of software to create a service;

3. Service generates new software, sometimes duplicating verbatim
   code;

Question was and still remains largely unsolved is how authors who use
newly generated code can be sure that generated software is free
software and to comply to GPL and other free software licenses?

Conclusion as of 2021-07-24 is that authors cannot be sure as there
are legal uncertainties.


Jean

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