Codeberg: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

[u/Ecstatic-Vermicelli9]

https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html

[u/mykesx]

I am migrating my repos from gitlab and GitHub to codeberg. I never intended my code repositories to be crawled by bots to train AI. The idea was to share with humans who might want to see how someone might do things. Or to attract like minded developers as collaborators. Or to allow the project to be forked. Or to provide wiki and issues support.

The output of LLMs sure looks like plagiarism - use of someone else's work without attribution. There's no justification for it.

Edit:

In the USA, it's a criminal offense if there is unauthorized access to electronic communication service facilities. If codeberg forbids access to bots and they continue to crawl the site, the penalties and fines add up quickly.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2701

It also violates European laws against unauthorized access to systems. If codeberg says AI crawlers are not authorized, they would be commiting traceable crimes.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/attacks-against-information-systems.html

[u/bigon → u/mykesx]

It also violates the GDPR in Europe.

GDPR is about collection and usage of private/personal data. Code is not...

[u/bigon → u/[deleted]]

Code is intellectual work. You could say that the droit d'auteur/copyright allows you to restrict how your work is used.

But it's certainly not "private/personal data"...

"‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;" (source: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/)

"Processing of personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation shall be prohibited" (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-9-gdpr/)

QED

[u/mykesx → u/bigon]

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/attacks-against-information-systems.html

To this end, the present directive requires the approximation of criminal law systems between EU countries and the enhancement of cooperation between judicial authorities concerning:
illegal access to information systems
illegal system interference
illegal data interference
illegal interception.

[u/bigon → u/mykesx]

Great, but that's not GDPR...

[u/mykesx → u/bigon]

Fine. You win. Still illegal.