[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.