<html><head></head><body>The gist of my poorly phrased last message was that it might not be necessary to add a TOS (or an additional restriction to copyleft) to the Trainer if the Model couldn't be used to produce proprietary software. Now I realize that I missed the important point that, in order to stop people from using Model to make proprietary software from GPL'd input, the current GPL *might* not be sufficient (regardless of the Model's licensing/TOS).<br><br>Thank you for bringing the RTL exception, and the nuances it brings up with respect to this topic.<br><br>Joseph<br><br>P.S. Thank you for making the subject line more descriptive.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On June 29, 2022 3:11:09 PM PDT, "Bradley M. Kuhn" <bkuhn@sfconservancy.org> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<pre dir="auto" class="k9mail">2022-06-22 committee meeting minutes noted:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #ad7fa8; padding-left: 1ex;">Some also noted we'd probably need to use terms of service to keep the thing<br>FOSS if we wanted to enforce a moral requirement (as opposed to, say, having<br>the copyleft license alone “take care of it”). Using terms of service to<br>mandate software freedom has not been used in past, and may be another type<br>of activity that would dilute coalition between more and less strident<br>activists.<br></blockquote></blockquote><br>Just as a reminder: the Committee is debating lots of speculative ideas about<br>what could be, or what we might want to do as activists. So, when you read<br>the minutes, keep in mind they aren't officially proposals — they're<br>discussion and ideas; we're publishing the minutes for transparency and to<br>spur discussion.<br><br>I say that because …<br><br>Joseph Turner wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">IIUC, the terms of service would be used to mandate that this new FOSS<br>Trainer be exclusively used on FOSS inputs to produce a FOSS Model. Is that<br>correct?<br></blockquote><br>… I don't know think anyone on the committee came to any conclusion on<br>specifics of how a ToS would be used here, just a general sense that ToS has<br>not been used before as a tool for software freedom, and the idea was floated<br>that perhaps such can more easily “be done” with ToS when copyleft<br>can't/shouldn't do those things.<br><br>If we open that door (which, as you can note in the minutes, some on the<br>committee immediately felt this runs immediately afoul of “fields of use” as<br>stated in the OSD/DSFG), probably a lot of options are present, but the<br>question would be whether they are ethical or not, and whether they violate<br>some other principle of software rights.<br><br>cf: the part in the minutes where we talked about whether “field of use” was<br>a fundamental principle or not, at least when the field of use is “writing<br>more proprietary software”.<br><br>To add something to that we didn't discuss in committee: one might argue that<br>copyleft itself is a “field of use” restriction since you cannot modify<br>copyleft software *into* proprietary software, so your “field of use” is, in<br>some sense, restricted. I think it's historically and culturally significant<br>that DFSG/OSD were both written well after copyleft was established to be<br>clearly a reasonable way to promote and protect software freedom. I posit<br>that had DFSG/OSD been written *before* copyleft was invented, *many* would<br>have argued that copyleft itself *is* a “field of use” restriction. That's<br>what leads me to wonder whether or not “no field of use” restriction is more<br>“cargo cult” than it is a rigorously considered a priori principle of rights.<br>Perhaps there *is* some software where that really ought to prohibit a given<br>“field of use” … loosely defined. For example, the GCC RTL Exception to GPL<br>exists as a tactical move, not because it's morally wrong for a compiler to<br>have a license that only allows it to compile code under a GPL-compatible<br>license. What if GCC were to remove the RTL Exception entirely tomorrow<br>(which the GCC developers can do at any time for future code — after all, all<br>GPLv3 Additional Permissions can be removed by anyone to return to pure<br>GPLv3). Would it be reasonable to say that GCC team had added a “field of<br>use” restriction to GCC? If not, why not? 🤔<br><br>Anyway, that's just a thought experiment to explore on where the “field of<br>use principle” comes from and to think about whether it really ought to be an<br>absolute/a priori principle in the age of more advanced AI.<br><br>Regardless, as I wrote in<br><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/mar/17/copyleft-ethical-source-putin-ukraine/">https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/mar/17/copyleft-ethical-source-putin-ukraine/</a><br>, I do believe that holding together the strained coalition around the<br>FSD/DFSG/OSD has value and we must take great care. A ToS-based software<br>freedom protecting solution could easily backfire in this regard, just as<br>writing in other ethical requirements into (would-be) FOSS licenses does.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">*If* the primary cost to produce a FOSS Model is compute time and not<br>developer time in creation and maintenance of the Trainer, then perhaps no<br>TOS would be necessary to prevent the creation of a proprietary Model with<br>the FOSS Trainer. IOW, if donations are given with the explicit goal of<br>creating a FOSS Model (and Trainer), and we create a good FOSS Model, then<br>perhaps the cost to create an alternative proprietary Model from the FOSS<br>Trainer would be prohibitively high.<br></blockquote><br>This logic doesn't seem to hold to me, because the cost is prohibitively high<br>for hobbyist and charities, but not for-profit companies and their trade<br>associations — all of whom are the key entities that either don't mind (or<br>actually *want*) more proprietary software in the world. I think your<br>argument only works in a world where resources are distributed perfectly<br>equally to all … and that world has never existed in human history AFAIK.<br>--<br>Bradley M. Kuhn - he/him<br>Policy Fellow & Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy<hr>Become a Conservancy Sustainer today: <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer">https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer</a><br><div class="k9mail-signature">-- <br>ai-assist mailing list<br>ai-assist@lists.copyleft.org<br><a href="https://lists.copyleft.org/mailman/listinfo/ai-assist">https://lists.copyleft.org/mailman/listinfo/ai-assist</a><br></div></pre></blockquote></div></body></html>