Voice.ai: GPL Violations with a Side of DRM

https://undeleted.ronsor.com/voice.ai-gpl-violations-with-a-side-of-drm/

by ronsor • 3 years ago

598 204 3 years ago

undeleted.ronsor.com

faisal_ksa• 3 years ago

I want to thank you for sharing this with us

arvidkahl• 3 years ago

I for the life of me can't understand removing people who point out such critical issues from your community. Is it greed? Ignorance? Complete unawareness of the Streisand effect?

trzy• 3 years ago

Sweep it under the rug hoping that this person is unlikely to be able to afford to litigate this.

runnerup2• 3 years ago

Their discord is now 99% full of people complaining about the GPL violations. The voice.ai discord moderators are so far handling it with aplomb.

PeterisP2• 3 years ago

I presume that this was an attempt to prevent the complainer from complaining in their public forum where it would be read by other users of their product.

Kalium• 3 years ago

Why check and see if they have a point, when it's easier to assume they're a crank and extortionist and ban them? Gets you the nice feeling of making it all go away immediately.

voakbasda3• 3 years ago

Great to see companies getting exposed for these kinds of violations. However, their response of shooting the messenger tells me that they will not simply roll over and give up their source code.

I strongly suggest contacting the owners of the open source projects and talking them into having a lawyer send a message to them. Those projects have the necessary legal standing to bring a meaningful copyright infringement case against Voice.ai.

There are plenty of lawyers that will send a suitable message, at no cost to the projects, For example, the Software Freedom Law Center [0] provides free consultations and has a good track record.

[0] https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/

ronsor5• 3 years ago

So far I've also emailed the FSF (license-violation@gnu.org) and am currently awaiting a response.

voakbasda3• 3 years ago

My understanding (which may be incorrect) is that the FSF actively defends copyright on GNU projects. They do not defend other projects, but they will consult with attorneys on matters of the licenses themselves.

Nevertheless, I (and I'm sure many others here on HN) would enjoy seeing the response from the FSF.

charcircuit4• 3 years ago

not simply roll over and give up their source code

Nothing requires them to give over the source code. They just have to stop distributing the software which is violating the license.

jasonlotito2• 3 years ago

They've already distributed the software. They are required per the license to distribute the source code. They can remove the source code that requires them to do this, but existing copies of the software must are covered under the license agreements.

i.e. The cat is out of the bag.

junon• 3 years ago

I'm not a fan of the GPL but in these cases it's a choice to simply not use it as opposed to steamroll through it.

I wish the OSS community had a legal team that would represent license violations like this. I have heard the FSF doesn't go after these, and EFF doesn't really tackle licensing issues like this does it?

EvanAnderson• 3 years ago

An earlier poster mentioned SFLC: https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact

The Software Freedom Conservancy is another place to look. They defend the GPL for a number of member projects, much like FSF does for GNU projects. (I don’t know how a project would go about becoming a member of the Conservancy)

https://sfconservancy.org/

password43214• 3 years ago

I understand the GPLv3 angle where the violation is clear, but not asking for other source code under LGPL:

In accordance with the LGPL v2.1, I am requesting a copy of the libgcrypt source code plus the source code of VoiceAILib.dll and of any other components, tools, and/or scripts necessary to reproduce a working executable with my own version of libgcrypt.

I thought the required binaries (needed to re-link, .obj for Windows) could be requested but the source was not required, isn't that the point of LGPL?

rmccue2• 3 years ago

The point of LGPL is that it’s less viral than the GPL, specifically for linking. If you link GPL code into your project, the whole project virally becomes GPL; with LGPL, the link is the boundary. You can still request a copy of the source of that library though.

password43214• 3 years ago

Thanks for the clarification.

The wording in the original article seemed to imply turning over the source was required by the LGPL, but if I understand what you're saying (You can still request a copy of the source of that library though) it should be more of a "pretty please, if you're feeling generous".

password43214• 3 years ago

Separately (really stretching the edges of my understanding here as I have not kept up with any court cases, settlements, or other ways this has come up and been resolved), it's my understanding that the nature of dynamic linking in Windows DLLs is seen by some as a proper boundary against the full GPL, such that only an affected DLL would require its entire source code available rather than the entire program. I believe the justification in such a case is that the DLL is serving it's intended/entire purpose and could be replaced.

I'm far from an expert but thought this was an interesting technical issue affecting open source licensing (perhaps similar to closed-source kernel drivers?). If anyone has recent experience sorting this out "in the real world" (amicably or not!) I'd love to hear about it.

Dylan168074• 3 years ago

To be pedantic, if you're mixing your code with GPL code and distributing the result then you're obligated to make it all GPL in order to follow the license, but it does not by itself become GPL.

goodpoint5• 3 years ago

the whole project virally becomes GPL

It does not. There is no such thing in copyright law as one work changing the license of another work. The idea of "virality" is incorrect.

If an author is violating the GPL by distributing e.g. MIT licensed code that links to GPL code it's up to them to choose between switching the whole work to GPL, or stop distributing it, or keep using MIT and stop including the GPL part.

They can even keep using MIT in libraries that are included in the main project and other combinations.

edit: see @bonzini reply

jahewson4• 3 years ago

No that is incorrect.

oakwhiz• 3 years ago

For the LGPL portion, it was linked statically, so they need to at minimum release enough of the code so that the LGPL portion can be relinked. This would not be an issue if it was linked dynamically. If they modified the LGPL portion they also need to make those modifications available to whoever they provided the binary to.

For the GPL portion they need to release the code for the whole binary.

leni5363• 3 years ago

AFAIK the point of the LGPL is that the LGPL license parts must be replaceable with a user-modified version. The easiest way to achieve that is through dynamic linking, but it's not the only way. They could release object files of their library and the LGPL licensed parts, document how to replace the object files of the LGPL licensed parts if you wish to do so, and how to link the whole thing into a dynamic library.

codeguro4• 3 years ago

That’s it, I’m reporting this to the FSF, and the copyright holders to libgcrypt and Praat.

This is exactly what the GPL license was made for!

favorited2• 3 years ago

I personally recommend downloading a copy of the Voice.ai software and contacting the developers to request source code.

This approach is what drives corporations to adopt zero-GPL policies. The GPLv3 explicitly includes language about how to cure a violation (spoiler alert: it's not "haha, we caught you - now hand over all of your source!"), and both of the mentioned violations are available under GPLv3.

This person needs to notify the copyright holders of the GPL libraries, who can then contact the copyright holders of the violating software, starting the timer on the window in which the offending software must be cured.

doesnt_know2• 3 years ago

This approach is what drives corporations to adopt zero-GPL policies.

Good. It's literally the point of choosing the GPL that organisations producing proprietary software can't benefit and mix in GPL licensed work without publishing the source.

favorited2• 3 years ago

It still doesn't accomplish anything. There's nothing magic about the GPL as a license which can force proprietary code to be released as open-source. Emailing someone and saying "your product contains GPL'd code, so give me your proprietary source code" is meaningless.

The copyright-holder can take action against an organization producing proprietary software who is violating their copyright. Legally, they're violating the rights of the copyright-holder, not the end-user.

The claim that a GPL violation could lead to the forcing open of proprietary code that has wrongfully included GPL'd components is simply wrong. There is no provision in the Copyright Act to require distribution of infringing work on altered terms. What copyright plaintiffs are entitled to, under the Act, are damages, injunctions to prevent infringing distribution, and--where appropriate--attorneys' fees. A defendant found to have wrongfully included GPL'd code in its own proprietary work can be mulcted in damages for the distribution that has already occurred, and prevented from distributing its product further. That's a sufficient disincentive to make wrongful use of GPL'd program code. And it is all that the Copyright Act permits.

https://lwn.net/Articles/61292/

4bpp• 3 years ago

Is there a problem with corporations that have no intention to contribute source code back to the public adopting zero-GPL policies? It seems that this conveys more of a disadvantage upon them than the presumed alternative (they use GPLed code with abandon to build more closed-source products more easily, knowing that if caught they can always weasel themselves out of any consequences by a "curing" process), resulting in closed-source software being of lower quality, resulting in fewer incentives for users to run it and more market share and eyeballs for open-source software, which is an outcome well-aligned with the preferences of the typical developer who puts their software under GPL.

midoridensha• 3 years ago

If you're talking about using GPL software in-house, that's perfectly fine. The GPL only requires you make changes available to those that you distribute the software to. So if you download GPL software, make changes to it or integrate it into your own program, and then you keep all that strictly in-house (only your own company employees can see it and use it), that's not a GPL violation, and you don't have to give your changes (or other software linked to it) to anyone outside the company.

codeguro4• 3 years ago

This approach is what drives corporations to adopt zero-GPL policies.

Good! That’s precisely the whole point of the GPL. That is: to prevent proprietary code, which harms users, from being mixed with Free Software! Proprietary software is harmful to the users. OpenAI is malware, it has cryptominers in it. It also sets off antivirus scanners. Now we’ll get to see if their claims are true by looking at the code for ourselves

devalidating• 3 years ago

If AI can create human readable code that compiles down to the exact same thing, would that negate it?

goodpoint5• 3 years ago

This approach is what drives corporations to adopt zero-GPL policies

Such companies are freeloaders at best and sometimes even hostile to FOSS and to users.

pessimizer3• 3 years ago

There's nothing wrong with not using Free Software.

StuckDuck2• 3 years ago

Unfortunately it seems like nowadays with open source being very widespread that many companies or people simply ignore/forget that these libraries that they include in their software aren't just "public domain" because the code is public, but they have a license that should be respected and actually has legal value, so what often ends up happening is that they take advantage of open source software or libraries in their proprietary software without even giving a crap about their authors and their community

ilaksh2• 3 years ago

But the first error is one that you seem to have made also: that there are different types of open source licenses. GPL or other copyleft licenses generally require you to disclose the code (or make a licensing deal in some cases). Things like the MIT license are much less restrictive.

ronsor5• 3 years ago

In this particular case, Voice.ai is also violating permissively licensed libraries. For example, libFLAC is included in VoiceAILib.dll:

    reference libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917

The license text: https://github.com/xiph/flac/blob/master/COPYING.Xiph

The license requires Voice.ai to include the license text somewhere in the distribution or documentation, yet they do not.

adrr6• 3 years ago

Only if you distribute the code. You can go take some copyleft code, modify to you liking but only run on you backend servers and that is perfectly fine. Copyright license only triggers on distribution.

jraph7• 3 years ago

the first error is one that you seem to have made also

They don't seem to have made such an error though. Their comment was very general, and permissive licenses still have conditions like giving attribution.

phpisthebest3• 3 years ago

yes but when you do npm install myfavlibrary it is all the same :)

StuckDuck2• 3 years ago

Yeah, I guess probably "free software" was a more appropriate term

flockonus• 3 years ago

Thanks for this article, saved me installing a potential vector.

rvz• 3 years ago

See? It is good to catch grifters abusing the GPL license and holding them accountable.

We can all do the same and file complaints like this one [0] about GitHub, OpenAI and Microsoft with their Copilot product and model being trained on AGPL-3.0 code and a mixture of incompatible licenses and also outputs sensitive info of developers.

Give that Truth Social was caught using Mastodon's source code and violated the AGPL license by giving no attribution and no copy of the source code which they later complied, now we are starting to see this with AI projects violating licenses of open source projects; the same should also apply to GitHub, OpenAI and Microsoft with their Copilot product.

[0] https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/

kmeisthax2• 3 years ago

Did Truth Social ever actually comply with AGPLv3? I thought they just pointed vaguely at the original Mastodon source repository.

Dylan168074• 3 years ago

a mixture of incompatible licenses

As far as copilot is concerned, those repos might as well be closed source. They are not accepting the license, and don't care about it. Their goal/claim is that the language model will not retain copyrightable sequences.

jimlongton2• 3 years ago

Their goal/claim is that the language model will not retain copyrightable sequences.

In case people are not aware, we know for a fact this is demonstrably false. It may not even be possible to achieve this with existing models. People have replicated entire sections of GPL code (with comments) using CoPilot. This is true of other models, like image generation models which can return clearly recognisable images which were present in their training sets.

kmeisthax2• 3 years ago

One thing I'd love to see would be a way for a copyright owner (e.g. GPL library developer) to get an injunction on an infringer prohibiting them from having "no reverse engineering" clauses in their license agreements.

RobotToaster3• 3 years ago

The GPL already prohibits further restrictions.

goodpoint5• 3 years ago

Correct. In addition it protects from patent trolling.

jzebedee• 3 years ago

The installer also doesn't even let you view the Terms and Conditions. It's styled as a link but it literally can't be opened: https://imgur.com/CUzLdRQ

This is ironic considering how aggressive the language is on their branding page: https://voice.ai/branding-guidelines

WARNING:
We use technology to check for infringement on the Internet and on social platforms and may automatically (or manually) issue takedown notices for content that infringes on our IP. Simply add our approved clip to your content to avoid takedown notices. We reserve all rights.

user39393822• 3 years ago

Now it works: https://voice.ai/tos

sva_• 3 years ago

So they're reading this thread, I suppose. But no statement yet.

post-it• 3 years ago

Someone hurriedly moved an </a>

user39393822• 3 years ago

If it's not already, it would be nice if Google and Apple made these types of violations grounds for revoking approval of apps from their app stores.

In general I abhor the whole concept of the "blessed app" walled garden gatekeeping, but if they're doing it anyway (and they are) they may as well do some good while they're at it.

RobotToaster3• 3 years ago

Isn't a copyright violation already some sort of grounds for removal? If someone uploaded an app with a bunch of disney copyrighted stuff it would be pulled pretty quickly.

I imagine at the least the original developers could file a DMCA notice.

intelVISA• 3 years ago

Seems like it should be, after all if you publish an app that plays copyrighted music it'd be folded by The Powers That Be pretty quickly.

JohnFen4• 3 years ago

In law, the size of your warchest matters a whole lot more than you think. Disney has an enormous warchest. You probably don't.

saurik• 3 years ago

https://www.engadget.com/2011-01-09-the-gpl-the-app-store-an...

http://web.archive.org/web/20110115040843/http://www.tuaw.co...

http://web.archive.org/web/20110111004349/http://planet.vide...

cwillu• 3 years ago

I mean, if Voice.ai doesn't have the rights to distribute a piece of software, then google and apple also do not have rights to distribute it. (They may have required that voice.ai (or whoever) indemnify them against legal action resulting from voice.ai's actions)

Perhaps the authors of praat or libgcrypt could issue a DMCA takedown request to apple and google?

kuroguro• 3 years ago

Imagine if google's app store ended up with a similar system to yt's content ID - fingerprinting binaries to check if they comply with licensing lol

jimlongton2• 3 years ago

We use deep learning technology to create realistic AI voice clones that sound exactly like an impression of anyone in the world; whether it's your favourite reality star, game character, celebrity or cartoon character.

Their business model is creepy and unethical.

Our Voice Universe community of contributors are training incredible voices every day to create hyper-realistic replicas that sound exactly like the real person!

And they even get their users to do the dirty work for them. Classy.

jeroenhd5• 3 years ago

> We use deep learning technology to create realistic AI voice clones that sound exactly like an impression of anyone in the world; whether it's your favourite reality star, game character, celebrity or cartoon character.
Their business model is creepy and unethical.

That's the weird thing to me, at least market it in some way that's not creepy. This tech can be amazing for people who have recordings of their voice but lost the ability to speak out loud since; I certainly would want to use this software for that purpose if I were ever to lose my voice long term. Or you could go the unexplored business direction and market it for voice actors and the companies that hire them (especially the lower segment, like for ads) because a voice alone cannot be copyrighted.

But no, they went the "creepy internet stalker/misinformation generator/scammer" way. Quite unimaginative.

dmitrygr• 3 years ago

IS there a donation link to help take this to court by copyright owners? I'd be glad to spend some dough on this

SomaticPirate• 3 years ago

Blatant disregard for GPL. I hope to see some lawsuits for this.

Doing things like this really should be an ethical violation for engineers. Every engineer should be able to say no to building something like this

vineyardmike• 3 years ago

Every engineer should be able to say no to building something like this

Considering it is illegal, every person is able to say no. The engineers are likely complicit, either that they didn't check, or didn't care about the license.

neilv3• 3 years ago

A lot of tech industry doesn't seem to take FLOSS license violations very seriously.

Maybe it'd help to instead call it "IP theft", which still sounds a bit serious.

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how this would work, but something like the following seems interesting...

In those cases in which IP theft appears to be intentional or grossly negligent, don't respond like a nonprofit flowerchild bringing peace and love to someone who simply didn't know. Instead, get a pitbull of a lawyer, to make the perpetrator actually regret it.

Which, for startups that made claims to investors regarding ownership/rights to the IP they used, could then trigger an additional concern: defrauding investors.

Then, after news of companies sorely regretting IP theft, a lot of companies proactively ban IP-theft-laundering tools like Copilot. And the companies that keep using tools like Copilot (or who don't excise existing stolen IP code quick enough, before forensic tools catch up, and catch them), start getting called to account by the pitbulls.

goodpoint5• 3 years ago

Maybe it'd help to instead call it "IP theft", which still sounds a bit serious.

It's not a problem of naming but of who can afford fighting a legal battle in court and who cannot.

There's been many famous episode of big companies going to court for copyright infringement. But they know they can ignore individual developers.

neilv3• 3 years ago

Is this a startup or law firm waiting to happen? (Preferably driven by true-believer public interest lawyers.)

lmm• 3 years ago

It's less about the money than the will. FOSS types tend to not want to sue.

echelon• 3 years ago

My team is about to launch a real time voice conversion system built in Rust without GPL violations, and we don't DRM our models, vits, vocoders, vad, etc.

We'll open source it.

phpisthebest3• 3 years ago

There are a few problems. Not even developers of Open Source software take it seriously, as Software Conservancy is viewed as "extremist" when they file law suits attempting to enforce GPL, with Linux Foundation explicitly saying they were NEVER sue anyone.

so if the code owners do not care why should the companies infringing on the license.

Then there is big problems with calling it theft, as legally is it not. Infringement is not theft and in most jurisdictions (if not all) in the US you are barred from calling it theft in court.

icelancer• 3 years ago

Yeah, I never understood this. Why go through all the hassle of arguing over license text on a mailing list for months on end when no one is going to actually use it in court?

c2h5oh3• 3 years ago

This will end when authors of a GPL licensed project with few authors (to make it easy to get everyone on board) decide they'd like some money now please, get a decent law firm to take the case on contingency and hit some company hard.

Praat would actually be a good candidate with just 2 people contributing majority of the code.

Record labels argued in court that each song shared in p2p networks that was downloaded at least once entitled them to statutory 150k USD in damages. Using that same logic Praat authors could demand 150k per release of voice.ai software at the very least.

In fact I would really like them to do that - it would fund further development of Praat at least and set a precedent showing that GPL != public domain, which seems to be the perception of many companies including large corporations, simply because nobody will care to enforce it.

panny• 3 years ago

A lot of tech industry doesn't seem to take FLOSS license violations very seriously.

devil's advocate

Why should they? The original point of the GPL was to be the anti-copyright, the copyleft. The original point was to prevent companies suing individual developers, not to be some sort of gotcha for developers to sue companies. GPL is a shield, not a sword. Why would a company care about using GPL code in their proprietary products? It's fair use. Oracle vs Google proved it. You have no rights over code you released for free, and nobody is going to side with you as a developer suing to protect those rights. Everyone sees it as a bait and switch.

jchw• 3 years ago

It's fair use. Oracle vs Google proved it.

That isn't what happened in that court case, less what it "proved." Fair use is highly dependent on the specific details of the usage. Before it was ruled fair use, the specific kind of code in question in that case (headers/API definitions) was ruled, and long believed to be, ineligible for copyright.

andrepd• 3 years ago

? GPL code is meant to be protected by requiring derived work to also be licensed under the GPL.

thingthatwas• 3 years ago

I don't think the author of the GPL would agree with your telling of the origin of it. It was specifically designed to ensure code released under it would remain free, including any changes made to it by companies and other developers.

The preamble to GPL v1: "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it." https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.html

To Google v Oracle, that was IIUC down to APIs usage being fair-use, not the code itself.

Teever• 3 years ago

Why should they?
GPL is a shield, not a sword.

Imagine explaining a soldier that they don't need to worry about being bashed to death with a shield because it a shield was designed to block blows.

Like the purpose for which the GPL was created is irrelevant to how it's being used, and people who are aware and desire to mitigate risks will be mindful of that.

JohnFen4• 3 years ago

Maybe it'd help to instead call it "IP theft", which still sounds a bit serious.

Please don't. "Theft" is something very different. We're talking about contract violations.

Instead, get a pitbull of a lawyer,

This is a piece of advice I give to everyone starting their own business anyway. Have a attorney, and it should be the meanest attorney you can find. Especially if you're a nice person.

neilv3• 3 years ago

Is it considered contract violation because the IP was publicly visible? Or because there was a license that could be used without signing?

If neither of those were true (let's say it was company secret source code, which was never licensed, but a copy was obtained and used anyway), would it still be a contract violation?

adrr6• 3 years ago

I had to list all the open source projects used within the org and all the licenses for both raising VC rounds and even when we did our IPO during diligence. Copyright infringement is enforced by the DMCA which gives copyright holders teeth to enforce their copyrights. I don't know anyone that doesn't take it seriously.

emodendroket2• 3 years ago

The theoretical risk is great and that's enough for some companies to take it very seriously. But I haven't heard of it happening much in practice and it seems like flagrant GPL violation stories are a fairly regular occurence.

emodendroket2• 3 years ago

Why would they? Can anybody recall any serious consequences someone faced for them?

teddyh• 3 years ago

Maybe it'd help to instead call it "IP theft", which still sounds a bit serious.

Hasn’t stopped wage theft.

BillSaysThis• 3 years ago

Not to mention they have the gall to include an ethics page on their site: https://voice.ai/ethics. Not that it mentions following the licenses discussed on this thread. ROFL but in a sad way.

klyrs• 3 years ago

ROFG (rolling on the floor grieving)

jfengel• 3 years ago

It's weird reading this thread on a site where I so often read "I don't believe in invisible property." Often applied to music, movies, or art.

I'm sure it's not as simple or hypocritical as the same people saying both things. And this specific story is about a very specific subversion of intellectual property rules to make it open. But it's a little weird hearing a complete lack of "information wants to be free" when the thing being "stolen" is our work.

runnerup2• 3 years ago

I think the “information wants to be free” crowd would be happier if all work was free to be stolen. GPL enforcement is currently necessary to make that happen. It would be better if it wasn’t.

RobotToaster3• 3 years ago

Copyleft ensures the continuation of a freedom already given, copyright restricts freedom.

(Yes I know de jure copyleft relies on copyright to exist, but morally they are diametrically opposite)

PeterisP2• 3 years ago

The original post is consistent with "information wants to be free" - we should be free to use and view Voice.ai source code, just as Voice.ai could use and view the code of these other projects they did. The only hypocrisy I see here is from Voice.ai, taking open source code themselves but then insisting (without any right to do so) that the result has become their proprietary "invisible property" and others can't do stuff with it.

funnymony2• 3 years ago

GPL is a briliant trick.

It is a extreme reaction to extremely dire copyright situation.

If information cant be free in this system, then let’s add a restriction that it must be free.

Briliant!

pessimizer3• 3 years ago

The same people are saying both things. The day we end copyright I'd be happy to end the GPL.

vore2• 3 years ago

Isn't the whole purpose of this to have the information, that is, the Voice.ai source, be free?

realusername2• 3 years ago

People have to make best of it with the less than ideal copyright system. Some open-by-default system would be a better alternative for sure.

leni5363• 3 years ago

I'm not sure. If software copyright didn't exist, then source code would still be treated as trade secret. Code obfuscation would be used to make reverse engineering harder and source code wouldn't be provided, which is not a lot of change for proprietary software. In addition, copyleft and free software attributions would not exist without a framework of enforcment. A clear loss for free software.

Free software, apart from some very permissive licenses, requires copyright to exist.

Joel_Mckay12• 3 years ago

The problem with GPL is its a contaminating license, there are problems proving violations, and shaking people down like a commercial entity is toxic.

I prefer Apache 2.0, as who knows where chunks of code end up 10 years from now.

If you are able, than its good karma to support the community with your own development hours and or fiscal donations. =)

bitL• 3 years ago

The whole point of GPL is that nobody gets to ride free without contributing sources back to community. Of course companies prefer Apache or similar licenses. But then you end up with Amazon taking over products they didn't develop, never paid a cent to original developers and squeezed all fiscal potential out of the product, killing off the original.

Joel_Mckay12• 3 years ago

Actually, if you can make money from my old code it makes me happy.

You are correct in that Bezos does little for the community, and AWS tends to repackage community projects. Yet, most firms do put in many paid hours on kernel development etc.

Have a wonderful day =)

pabs311• 3 years ago

contributing sources back to community

Nothing in the GPL requires this, only distributing sources down to your users, who may or may not then redistribute the sources back upstream.

maxhille• 3 years ago

I offer you a different perspective:

GPL (ie. Copyleft) guarantees "open source" for _users_ of the software

Apache (ie. permissive) gives source code to _developers_.

UncleEntity3• 3 years ago

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Most of my code, being I usually just make python wrappers around C/C++ libraries I want to play with, retains whatever license the original library uses. That’s the license they want, that’s the license I follow.

The rare occasion I actually put up original code on GitHub (not really sure I’ve ever done that though, I have a bad yak shaving addiction…would have to check so “theoretically”) I just use a BSD license because I don’t care — some jurisdictions require a license, that the most free one and I’d be happy if someone used my code for whatever.

Joel_Mckay12• 3 years ago

"The Dude Abides"... that film was epic. =)

I also like the LGPL or wxWidgets licenses, as it encourages professional linux application development/ports. (Qt5 was an example of doing things wrong in my opinion.)

I agree it is a personal choice, and I like giving people more freedom to build.

The punitive culture around GPLv3 is especially unsavory. =)

esskay• 3 years ago

Time to let the free software foundation know. Is this something they are likely to help the authors of the IP theft take action against Voice AI for if they refuse to comply?

madsbuch2• 3 years ago

Is it safe to assume that GPT3 has been trained on GPLed code? And in that case, should the GPT3 source code be freely available?

yokem55• 3 years ago

The healthy approach would be that AI models can 'study' code as much as they want and aggregate what they learn into a model. The 'right to read' is a thing. But the end user of the model should take care that the output they get is not infringing on anyone's copyright.

jeroenhd5• 3 years ago

We'll find out when this issue eventually ends up in court. Copilot is the most notable example of this mess.

If a judge rules that AI will regurgitate existing code or that the network stores this code, these models will very quickly infringe the GPL and all matter of licenses at the same time.

If this is the case, you'll also need to figure out what GPL compliance looks like. The code training the network likely doesn't contain any code that must be shared, only the model being executed. Does that mean that providing the entire data set complies with GPL, leaving it up to the user to spend millions on training their own network? Or does the model file itself need to be distributed as-is?

The AI people argue that AI learns concepts from code and does not store or replicate the input code directly, though I very much doubt that given that AI will spit out code it has been trained on verbatim. If this is the case then the code may have been processed by the algorithm, but the license impact would be similar to processing it in another way: just because you compress up a bunch of code doesn't mean you need to open source your compression tool.

We need clear legislation for this because the court cases are going to be a clusterfuck.

kevincox• 3 years ago

I've also read GPL code and that doesn't make anything I write GPL. It matters if the code was substationally copied or not.

So I think I would apply the same rules to AI. In general not all code produced is infringing on the copyright of all authors of training data. However there have been some clear cases of copying (GPL license text and a matrix multiplication routine for example) that do appear as copyright violations.

madsbuch2• 3 years ago

Imagine a model. It reads source code, and learns by heard how to execute it. Now you use that model to execute GPLed code + some changes to the code you instruct your model to also take into account. You don't need to adhere to the GPL license because your machine is merely "learning" not executing – Tadaa!

Truth is that the insight that there is no difference on data and program code in particular stands here. If the model can act on the code. It can be said to execute it.

circuit102• 3 years ago

This is flawed for a few reasons:

- Training isn’t the same thing as actually using the code

- The training process doesn’t change the code of GPT-3, it changes the parameters, which are input data to the code and not a part of it

- They aren’t distributing any binaries for GPT3, though for AGPL that wouldn’t matter

DDBE• 3 years ago

To clear up this confusion about "lashing out": You gave the impression of violating the TOS by debating an offline version and offering to provide information about it, so you could circumvent DMCA takedowns. That's when the volunteer mods had a group chat and decided a ban.

TheRealPomax• 3 years ago

We've been here before - if someone points out that the contract is void, and you ban them for then talking about or doing things that the contract forbids, the proper action is to turn around to the people who make the product you're a community mod for and go "hey, uh, it looks like you've tricked us into enforcing an illegal contract" instead of banning the person pointing out the thing you're community modding for is in multiple violations of the law.

stefan_• 3 years ago

Volunteer mods? You mean racketeers?

nylonstrung• 3 years ago

I'm very tempted to have my IP lawyers reach out to with a near-identical request.

Would anyone want to participate in a more coordinated effort urging them to comply?

ronsor5• 3 years ago

I would personally love to participate. The more people behind it, the better.

c2h5oh3• 3 years ago

I wonder if GPL provisions regarding DRM removal and modification supersede anything in voice.ai license. If yes deobfuscating it, removing DRM and releasing it should be perfectly legal.

ronsor5• 3 years ago

The GPLv3 prohibits adding additional restrictions and requires the distributor to waive their right to prohibit DRM circumvention.

If Voice.AI attempts to enforce their ToS anyway, they are violating the GPL. IANAL, but because of the clean-hands doctrine, such a suit would fail.

c2h5oh3• 3 years ago

That's my understanding as well, but lacking the knowledge to remove DRM and willingness to become a target of a lawsuit to prove a point I am not going to test that legal theory just yet.

robocat• 3 years ago

They can sue for damages, because the clean-hands doctrine doesn’t apply to suing for money, only applies to suing for equity (anything that isn’t money).

  The doctrine if unclean hands may only be used as a defense in claims of equity – which are claims in which the court seeks to make things equal or fair, though not by ordering the payment of damages

IANAL - just noticed that and thought you might find it interesting…

habibur• 3 years ago

Here's one way to by pass GPL restrictions when you must use it for whatever reason.

Create a separate service with all the GPL codes. Write your own micro service API to communicate with it. And then open source your micro service code without opening up your propitiatory part.

Of course someone else should have thought of it before. Searched and found first hit on stackoverflow. That says it's OK at least when used in a separate VM, no shared memory between the two.

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/40420/gpl-licensed-c...

jeroenhd5• 3 years ago

If you run the server locally you'll still need to hand out the GPL'd code but that would likely work.

The moment you include an AGPL licensed piece of code this no longer works, though. The post only mentions GPL and LGPL, but they're also violating other licenses as pointed out here in the comments. I wouldn't be surprised if there's also an AGPL licensed piece of code in there that makes this workaround impossible.

Honestly, this workaround sounds like a lot of work to maintain long term while also putting you at the whims of library maintainers who may just switch out the license on you with newer versions, leaving you to do the maintenance and security monitoring of your dependency. If you need to put so much work into avoiding complying with the license you should consider just writing your own code instead.

bigape911• 3 years ago

Well, they are going to "fix" the problem by removing the FPL code. I don't trust that for a moment. They'll morr likely remove any identifying clues so no more gpl. Don't trust anyone

Voice.ai: GPL Violations with a Side of DRM

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