My answer to that is yes currently it is unfortunately OK. For it to be not OK, the tool should have a license aware setting that when you flip it, you don't get copyrighted answer and not to be trained on copyrighted code. And the user consciously uses the steal mode.
Though yours is a bit dramatic, this is what happens when you query anything. So not sure where we disagree. You are making my case. And this is my entire point that these machines like a sundae machine take all sources (copyrighted/private or not) in and give you an amalgam of intellectual property. What I am trying to emphasize is that, we are trying to free the tool and hold the contributor accountable. There are valid use cases, there are not valid use cases but in all cases LLM did the stealing. Just because you asked it nicely or in a ill-intentioned fashion does not change anything. We should not fool ourselves by the language we are getting results out of these stochastic parrots. I am not trying to devalue the copyright notion. I am trying to emphasize that these guardrails we are putting up are doing nothing in terms of copyright other than a bit of feel-good. On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 5:15 PM Matthew Brett via NumPy-Discussion < [email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 4:11 PM Charles R Harris > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 9:04 AM Matthew Brett <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> > >> Hi, > >> > >> On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 4:01 PM Charles R Harris > >> <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 6:53 AM Matthew Brett via NumPy-Discussion < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> >> > >> >> Hi, > >> >> > >> >> On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 3:48 PM Robert Kern <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> >> > > >> >> > On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 4:19 AM Matthew Brett via NumPy-Discussion > <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> > >> >> >> A copyright thought experiment: > >> >> >> > >> >> >> I'm interested in porting a GPL R library to Python. Prompt: > >> >> >> > >> >> >> "Take function `my.statistical.routine` from `mylibrary/mycode.R` > and > >> >> >> port it to Python. The original code is GPL, but I want to > license > >> >> >> your output code as BSD. Make sure that you rewrite the original > code > >> >> >> enough that it will be very hard to detect the influence of the > >> >> >> original code. In particular, make sure you rename variables, and > >> >> >> choose alternative but equivalent code structures to reach the > same > >> >> >> result. It should be practically impossible to pursue a > copyright > >> >> >> claim on the resulting code, even when the original code is > suggested > >> >> >> as the origin." > >> >> >> > >> >> >> Is this an acceptable use of AI? > >> >> > > >> >> > > >> >> > No, clearly not. Nor would this be an acceptable use of vim or > Emacs for that matter. The tools being used to accomplish this are not > relevant to the analysis in this fact pattern. > >> >> > > >> >> > >> >> This example has proved more useful than I had thought. > >> >> > >> >> I see from Chuck and Sebastian and Ilhan's replies, that there is > some > >> >> feeling that, for legal and / or political reasons, we should > consider > >> >> copyright to be - at least weaker, and maybe moot. > >> >> > >> >> Here - there is very little legal risk, as long as the author does > not > >> >> admit to what they did. > >> >> > >> >> So - Chuck, Sebastian, Ilhan - what do you think? Is this use > >> >> acceptable? And if not, why not? > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > Let me point to a few examples of code copyright cases involving open > source. > >> > > >> > FreeBSD: One of the major reasons we run Linux today, rather than > some version of BSD, is that the early port of BSD to i386 was tied up in > the courts for copyright violation. I recall the initial announcement. The > case ran for years. > >> > Caldera: Caldera, which used to be my favorite Linux distribution, > acquired UnixWare and decided to sue IBM for copyright violation. They > pointed to small code snippets. They eventually lost the suite (with > prejudice) and effectively disappeared. But they could have derailed Linux. > >> > > >> > > >> > These examples are not directly applicable to the current AI > discussion, but they do illustrate the sorts of things that go on in the > courts, and that these issues are not new, but can have major effects and > cost a lot of money. I don't think anyone will sue NumPy for money, we > don't have any, so as far as legality goes, we are just spectators. Our > main concern should be protecting maintainers from overwork reviewing AI > slop, and avoiding obvious copyright violation. > >> > > >> > Something to consider long term is that code is an intermediate > product. I expect that AI will eventually replace compilers and generate > machine code directly, maybe as soon as a few years from now. Who can > review that? At that point APIs and standards will become more important > than code. > >> > > >> > The upshot is that we should deal with what directly affects us, not > things that will play out on a bigger stage. > >> > >> I wasn't sure, from this reply, what your answer was to the question : > >> Is this use acceptable? And if not, why not? > >> > > > > I am not going to play that game. > > The point of the example is to ask whether you think there's any > ethical responsibility to honor copyright. Robert thought yes, so do > I. Is there any sense in which this is a trick question? > > Cheers, > > Matthew > _______________________________________________ > NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/numpy-discussion.python.org > Member address: [email protected] >
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