[myrmidon]

> GPL is a license explicitly designed to maximize use

I feel this is a misrepresentation. GPL rather seems designed to maximize source availability for users.

But mandatory public source availability does make selling software products more difficult ("why would anyone pay if they can just use the source"), which is why most commercial software products still sell and ship binaries when they can.

[Rochus]

> designed to maximize source availability

Right. It depends on what you mean by "use"; GPL maximizes use in the sense that it prevents anyone from taking the code proprietary and thereby restricting future users' access. But it doesn't touch my actual point, which is that GPL explicitly permits commercial use, broad distribution, and also LLM training (none of which are restricted by the license). The source availability requirement is the condition, not a restriction on who can use the code.

> why would anyone pay if they can just use the source

Red Hat, Qt, and countless others have built commercial businesses on GPL code. So apparently there is a business and people willing to pay even if the source code is available. But that was not my point anyway.

[myrmidon]

I can see your point, and I do agree that people often cry about "but copyright" in LLM contexts when simply not appropriate.

But I can still understand the Kefir author; if you previously defaulted to GPL (over MIT/BSD) mainly because you wanted to foster an open-source software development culture, then the emergence of LLMs might well be a turning point were publishing your project makes no more sense to you; thanks to LLMs, publishing your open-source project might do more for commercial closed source actors (via better trained LLMs used by the developers they employ) than for open-source developers (or open source culture overall).

Instead of potentially creating a valuable GPL project that pushes other users towards GPL/open source, you might end up making your project a sort of "commodity" easily available to all closed-source developers for a moderate cost in tokens...

[Rochus]

It's his code and of course he can decide what to do with it. I just think it's a shame when people make hasty, ill-considered decisions based on misunderstandings and false assumptions. Copyright law is (unfortunately) much more complicated than most people realize. There's also an irony worth noting: many of the same developers who expect free access to compilers, libraries, and frameworks built by companies and use them without a second thought, are the ones loudest about 'exploitation' when the flow goes the other direction. Open source is a two-way street. Personally, I think it's great when people (both individuals and companies) use my software and I've been able to make a contribution to society through it.

[myrmidon]

Do you think that the author is deciding based on misunderstanding/false assumptions?

He explicitly states that the AI training concerns are not about legal GPL violations but about going against his licensing intentions (and those seem very much in line with the "copyleft spirit" from what I can tell).

My take is that the LLM emergence "threatens" the whole copyleft framework in a way similar to cloud services in the past (which led to the AGPL): closed source development can extract a lot of value from copyleft projects without contributing back in any way (to neither upstream nor their own users).

[Rochus]

Yes, I think the reaction is disproportionate. The philosophical concern is understandable, but withdrawing the project doesn't address it; it just removes something valuable from people who aren't responsible for the problem he perceives.

And companies are ultimately owned by people, including ordinary savers whose pension funds depend on them, and they employ people, so they contribute to society.