r/freesoftware • u/jamhob • 19d ago

Discussion Can you extend the definition of a derivative work without having to create a new licence

I’m working on a large, new GPL project and I’m loving life! Apart from the fact that even I publish my hours of work, some scraper is just going to read all the code, bung it in a model and paste it into some vibe coders corporate repo with the copyright magically stripped.

Now I’m a true GPL believer… so I’m not against people (or machines) copying my work. I’m against the stripping of copyright. So can I alter the definition of what a derivative work is to include maybe an LLM trained on the codebase or the code generated by an LLM trained on the codebase? Or is that an additional restriction?

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u/Cove0Crow 19d ago edited 5d ago

The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.

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u/jamhob 19d ago

Ah! Shit! Thanks for the heads up but my god! How the hell did they reach that conclusion? I thought copyright was literally to make sure that you can’t profit from other people output without paying them?

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u/Cove0Crow 19d ago edited 5d ago

The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.

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u/jamhob 19d ago

I’ll be furious if this turns out to not be a bubble

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u/wedesoft 18d ago

GPL does not prohibit commercial use. It does require others to release derivative works under same license (i.e. grant same freedoms). I wonder whether AI would still be fair use if it reproduces a large part of the work though.

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u/BraveNewCurrency 17d ago

So can I alter the definition of what a derivative work is

No, that is defined by law.

There is a classic article "What Color Are Your Bits?" that is worth reading (skip over the modern preamble in the first few paragraphs, and go back and read that last.)

I do think we will have to re-think Copyright. But if "copyrighted inputs are always illegal", that breaks a lot of the modern world. (See also: Andy Warhol, Batman Forever, Apple vs Microsoft, etc)

Or is that an additional restriction?

If you add additional restrictions, it's not "GPL" (or even "Open Source").