Isn’t that literally what they’re for? Sucking up the world’s open source code and reproducing it without attribution, that’s literally what they’ve been trained to do.
I guess there's a subtle difference between "I reproduced this thing from memory that looks uncannily like some other work I \"read\" some time ago", and good old, "I copy/pasted and deleted your name, soz" which has been around as long as people have been releasing code to the world.
Truly some "surely leopards won't eat my face" nonsense. There is no honor among thieves; you shouldn't expect other slopmongers not to plagiarize you.
This is not a slop gone wrong story though. They had the code taken directly and on purpose and even keeping the names, and then later removed the names on purpose.
My point is that the same moral bankruptcy is demonstrated in slicing and dicing the entirety of human culture to make slop machines and in scratching authors' names off of open source libraries.
It confuses me all that "disappointment" in the post.
Did Google comply the licence or not? I admit I scanned through the post, so may be it is there and I missed it.
Edit: the "original" is under the Apache licence, but I'm not sure the licence was applied correctly as the files cited as example didn't have the licence boilerplate in the header.
Even assuming the licence was not applied correctly, that makes the effective licence more restrictive by default, not less. The Apache licence is what allowed Google to use this code in the first place.
I loathe this mindset. "You shouldn't surprised that companies act unethically" is not the same statement as "It's ok for companies to act unethically". Observation is not acceptance!
In fact it's more unreasonable and harmful to expect naively ethical behaviour from corporations, in contravention of all the evidence to the contrary. It's only by treating them with the suspicion and hostility that they deserve, that the "race to the bottom" can be avoided!
One can disagree with someone's behavior without being surprised by it. What Google did here is egregious -- but is it more egregious than what they already did to train Gemini?
Are they at least violations of different magnitude?
Here's a personal anecdote. I am happy for my open source code to end up in training datasets, because I later benefit from the models being influenced, however slightly, by my personal style. I also believe that falls under "fair use" terms in US law, and I'm OK with that.
I'm unhappy if someone copies my code directly into their project without crediting me. In addition to that feeling scummy it's also a legal violation of the terms of my licenses.
I don't like that people who don't want their stuff in training data have their stuff in training data.
The best solution we've seen for that right now is opting out, but forcing people to opt out - especially when, once their stuff is in the training data it can't be removed - is a clearly absurd solution.
So, given that I want this technology to exist because I find it useful and think it delivers enough benefit to humanity to be worth the training cost, I find myself paraphrasing John Cena in Pluribus:
Given our druthers, would we choose [to scrape the web for training data]? [...] Honestly, we're not that keen on it ourselves. But we're left with little choice.
I was about to say that this is why license selection matters, but as I read the Apache license, which was what the project was licensed under has the following conditions:
In this case You is Google.
4b: You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files.
4c: You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works
4d: If the Work includes a "NOTICE" text file as part of its distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained within such NOTICE file, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works, in at least one of the following places: within a NOTICE text file distributed as part of the Derivative Works; within the Source form or documentation, if provided along with the Derivative Works; or, within a display generated by the Derivative Works, if and wherever such third-party notices normally appear.
So, from an inspection of both repos, it looks like Google has illegally copied the software.
Remember, Open Source/Free Software is not free from all responsibility.
Even with this, though, I still believe Google to do the right thing (even if it is not using the said OSS and just doing their own) a lot more then any other big tech name.
Oh, so they added license notices after they were publicly called out? Yeah, that really demonstrates a commitment to doing the right thing for its own sake 🙄
I no longer work for Google, but worked for OSPO as well, and, yeah. I am sure that at least OSPO (or what remains of it) is having a lot of very angry emails with someone on the Artemis team.
Goodness, how do you even evaluate the liability for something like this these days?
It would surely be unfair to ask for 1% of 1 year of Google's revenues, even though Android and AI make up two substantial verticals. Maybe one ten thousandth part?
It doesn't look much like deterance, but I guess the alternative is we could acknowledge that intellectual property is dead and just let loose.
caius | 19 hours ago
Good to know stripping attribution from open source libraries is still alive and kicking in the age of clankers.
Axman6 | 10 hours ago
Isn’t that literally what they’re for? Sucking up the world’s open source code and reproducing it without attribution, that’s literally what they’ve been trained to do.
caius | 54 minutes ago
I guess there's a subtle difference between "I reproduced this thing from memory that looks uncannily like some other work I \"read\" some time ago", and good old, "I copy/pasted and deleted your name, soz" which has been around as long as people have been releasing code to the world.
mtset | 19 hours ago
Truly some "surely leopards won't eat my face" nonsense. There is no honor among thieves; you shouldn't expect other slopmongers not to plagiarize you.
singpolyma | 19 hours ago
This is not a slop gone wrong story though. They had the code taken directly and on purpose and even keeping the names, and then later removed the names on purpose.
mtset | 19 hours ago
My point is that the same moral bankruptcy is demonstrated in slicing and dicing the entirety of human culture to make slop machines and in scratching authors' names off of open source libraries.
iggle | 19 hours ago
The irony seems entirely lost considering even this blogpost is apparently not worth the effort to hand-write.
reidrac | 17 hours ago
It confuses me all that "disappointment" in the post.
Did Google comply the licence or not? I admit I scanned through the post, so may be it is there and I missed it.
Edit: the "original" is under the Apache licence, but I'm not sure the licence was applied correctly as the files cited as example didn't have the licence boilerplate in the header.
https://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html#Apply-My-Software
Although is not a requirement. Could be the files were distributed independently from the licence file. I guess :D
vifon | 16 hours ago
Even assuming the licence was not applied correctly, that makes the effective licence more restrictive by default, not less. The Apache licence is what allowed Google to use this code in the first place.
singpolyma | 16 hours ago
Did they comply? Not. That's what the post is about.
reidrac | 14 hours ago
Then why all the disappointment? Google don't have permission to use the code because they didn't comply with the licence.
pbsds | 15 hours ago
Yeah sure lets just accept this race to the bottom
scubbo | 11 hours ago
I loathe this mindset. "You shouldn't surprised that companies act unethically" is not the same statement as "It's ok for companies to act unethically". Observation is not acceptance!
In fact it's more unreasonable and harmful to expect naively ethical behaviour from corporations, in contravention of all the evidence to the contrary. It's only by treating them with the suspicion and hostility that they deserve, that the "race to the bottom" can be avoided!
mtset | 15 hours ago
One can disagree with someone's behavior without being surprised by it. What Google did here is egregious -- but is it more egregious than what they already did to train Gemini?
simonw | 13 hours ago
Yes, it's more egregious than what they did to train Gemini.
mtset | 13 hours ago
Why? Both are, at least to me, clear violations of both the license text of ooen source projects, and the social contract of open source.
simonw | 12 hours ago
Are they at least violations of different magnitude?
Here's a personal anecdote. I am happy for my open source code to end up in training datasets, because I later benefit from the models being influenced, however slightly, by my personal style. I also believe that falls under "fair use" terms in US law, and I'm OK with that.
I'm unhappy if someone copies my code directly into their project without crediting me. In addition to that feeling scummy it's also a legal violation of the terms of my licenses.
mtset | 10 hours ago
Yeah, absolutely. Doing it lots of times to tens of thousands of authors is way worse than doing it to a few authors once.
So you got what you wanted. That's great! But shouldn't other people have a choice?
simonw | 9 hours ago
I don't like that people who don't want their stuff in training data have their stuff in training data.
The best solution we've seen for that right now is opting out, but forcing people to opt out - especially when, once their stuff is in the training data it can't be removed - is a clearly absurd solution.
So, given that I want this technology to exist because I find it useful and think it delivers enough benefit to humanity to be worth the training cost, I find myself paraphrasing John Cena in Pluribus:
mtset | 8 hours ago
mattrose | 17 hours ago
I was about to say that this is why license selection matters, but as I read the Apache license, which was what the project was licensed under has the following conditions:
In this case You is Google.
4b: You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files.
4c: You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works
4d: If the Work includes a "NOTICE" text file as part of its distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained within such NOTICE file, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works, in at least one of the following places: within a NOTICE text file distributed as part of the Derivative Works; within the Source form or documentation, if provided along with the Derivative Works; or, within a display generated by the Derivative Works, if and wherever such third-party notices normally appear.
So, from an inspection of both repos, it looks like Google has illegally copied the software.
Remember, Open Source/Free Software is not free from all responsibility.
johnklos | 17 hours ago
Did you really expect better from Google? Does anyone really believe that Google isn't prioritizing profit over literally everything else?
This doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
beto | 15 hours ago
The company that actively dropped the motto "don't be evil"...
zladuric | 15 hours ago
Even with this, though, I still believe Google to do the right thing (even if it is not using the said OSS and just doing their own) a lot more then any other big tech name.
I hope this is an exception, and not a rule.
jjuran | 17 hours ago
"On the bright side, the version powering Minitap today is closed source."
Well, at least it has a happy ending! :D
/sarcasm
cflewis | 16 hours ago
Disclaimer: I work for Google and I used to work for Google's Open Source office, but I am not speaking for either.
It does appear the right thing was done here in a follow up commit: https://github.com/google/artemis/commit/371aa6df56880643da57b30da936e9812fb0ec66
I will say that Google OSS takes licensing extremely seriously, if only because it's the right thing to do. You can see much of the internal documentation published externally, e.g. Google's licensing policy.
simonw | 13 hours ago
That commit September 17th. The linked blog posts September 11th - so pretty clear the commit was in response to the complaint.
I think the blog post should update to reflect this though. The fact that the issue was remedied is material.
MoonlitKnight | 9 hours ago
Oh, so they added license notices after they were publicly called out? Yeah, that really demonstrates a commitment to doing the right thing for its own sake 🙄
fly | 13 hours ago
I no longer work for Google, but worked for OSPO as well, and, yeah. I am sure that at least OSPO (or what remains of it) is having a lot of very angry emails with someone on the Artemis team.
singpolyma | 15 hours ago
Glad to see this fixed!
andrewballinger | 18 hours ago
Goodness, how do you even evaluate the liability for something like this these days?
It would surely be unfair to ask for 1% of 1 year of Google's revenues, even though Android and AI make up two substantial verticals. Maybe one ten thousandth part?
It doesn't look much like deterance, but I guess the alternative is we could acknowledge that intellectual property is dead and just let loose.
Halkcyon | 16 hours ago
Isn't that just what LLMs are doing as-is?
singpolyma | 15 hours ago
No