Turn off telemetry, delete ChatGPT conversations, and I like having an LLM for GitHub
versus
Give us all your personal data and we're sharing it with ad partners, your personal data is our number one product and secondary products are only made to support the first endeavor.
Don't forget the Office 365 "productivity" measures.
And the latest insanity, at least for me, ads in the settings of Windows 11. Never ever put ads in any configuration menu of the operating system. That clearly says, it's not my computer, its MS's and they try to squeeze every penny out they can get. So they aren't any different from Google, they even try to push you to the Cloud and then make mistakes a cloud enterprise shouldn't make
The Free PC people must be wondering what they did wrong.
Why not? I think they're great: they make more money for M$. If the users don't like it, too bad. Why should I care about them?
>That clearly says, it's not my computer, its MS's and they try to squeeze every penny out they can get.
That's right. It's not your computer, and you should just accept that and get used to it. You chose this path, by choosing MS as your OS provider.
>So they aren't any different from Google
No, they are different: Google doesn't control my PC's OS. The only PC OS they control is ChromeOS, which only runs on certain (usually low-end) hardware, and isn't normally used for any serious work.
That LLM was trained on FOSS software that others like myself wrote and did not consent to have used in such a manner. Even if you're also a FOSS contributor and you're fine with it, I'm not.
So you like it, but you're not the party whose consent matters. You're the customer consuming the laundered goods from the fence.
I think it is pretty obvious that lots of GPL authors wouldn’t want their code to be productized in ways that don’t contribute back to the community, because they had the ability to use a BSD or MIT license and didn’t take it.
Legally, of course, LLMs are not people. They don’t have the same rights as people, and it isn’t obvious whether or not they can legally generate new IP. They operate by a complicated but essentially mechanical process, and it is pretty novel to say that such a process could be used to remove copyrights.
But the defendant won't be Microsoft — they just provided a tool, and that's legal. No, the defendant will be the downstream consumer who incorporated the code spat out by the LLM.
It doesn't matter whether the LLM "learned" — intent is irrelevant and the defendant will have committed copyright violation regardless. The LLM can't copyright-wash the code — nobody can.
The attribution licenses such as ALv2, BSD, MIT, etc. which are generally considered to be "permissive" still require attribution, and this condition is not upheld by popular LLMs.
Of course, the copied material has to be judged substantial enough for the license to apply in a court of law, which is a human-arbitrated threshold.
It will most likely be a copyleft author who eventually brings a court case, but the attribution licenses do not allow for LLM usage either unless the LLM provides attribution and preserves notices as spelled out in the licenses.
The point is that there are repositories on Github that contain commits from non-Github-users. For example, not every single commit to the Linux kernel has been made by a Github user, but there is a mirror at https://github.com/torvalds/linux .
> You're playing a dumb game
For what it’s worth I’m not a lawyer and surely get some things wrong but licensing is an area where I have a certain amount of practical experience.
There’s some interesting ground to cover on this topic but we aren’t getting there and the incivility isn’t helping. Please consider this passage from the HN guidelines:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Also, take it up with Torvalds:
"And yes, at least under US copyright law, and at least if you see Linux as a "collective work" (which is arguably the most straightforward reading og copyright law, but perhaps not the only one) I am actually the sole owner of copyright in the *collective* work of the Linux kernel."
I may be working from old information, but doesn't Windows 10 still have unstoppable, and unauditable, telemetry?
Use a PiHole?
Annoying!
Google and Microsoft are different. The same: I am reluctantly using products from both. The different: Their history and their products.
However I don't think that you should differentiate your trust between them.
We should think about why Corporate does enshittification and how to prevent it.
What do you mean by this? What kind of information do advertisers get to receive?
Also, they sell provide it governments in the form of warrant requests.
For more info, read up in google ad auction fraud, and google location warrant.
Microsoft is actually worse though. For one thing, Windows’ default telemetry level lets them pull files off your machine. Here’s a Microsoft apologist explaining it:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-telemetry-secrets/
The US CLOUD Act (which Microsoft lobbied for) means that they have to pull that data in response to US warrant requests, regardless of what country you are in.
Also, they already merged mojang (minecraft) into the Microsoft login umbrella. It is clearly a dry run for when they merge linkedin and github in, so they can provide better worker surveillance capabilities to their corporate customers.
Advertisers don't usually receive detailed information, instead they are promised that their advertisements are targeted correctly. To do that the data about people is used.
But with this data Corporate gets too much power. Corporate needs to follow Human Rights, like states. One aspect is that there is no due process in case of conflicts, like someone being wrongly excluded from using a Corporate service. We also need transparency about how this data is used exactly and who else gets views.
Europe is trying to establish transparency with the GDPR, however is foiled by malicious compliance by Corporate. It does not help that Europe is clumsy.