Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnisgood | Hacker News Reader

And who thinks that, for even a second, that an European (in this case) will not download, install, and try to run this just because the LICENSE says you can't?

FYI, this is not intended to be offensive to Europeans, I am European myself. That is not the point. The point is, who gives a damn about the LICENSE in reality, on their PERSONAL computer? Serious question.

View on HN

The licence is not there for enforcement from their side. It's a legal protection for Huawei. Essentially "We told you it's not for the EU. If you get sued don't try to put it on us."

Also any company of a serious size will have lawyers interested in licences of everything you're running.

I am not talking about companies. I edited my comment. Emphasis on "[their] PERSONAL" computer.

I know that companies would probably not. But individuals?

> The point is, who gives a damn about (doing an illegal thing) in reality, on their (private property where nobody is likely to see that)?

I'm not sure which part of that you find confusing. Some people will estimate benefit>risk and won't care.

What? I do not find anything confusing. You live in a Marvel world if you think a LICENSE is going to stop people from using a product. But like you said, it is not intended to be for enforcement purposes, but Huawei is trying to save its own ass.

So what is your answer? Mostly companies only? That is a fair answer, but you are the one who said this:

> You'll be both breaking their licence and potentially your local European data laws.

Again, who cares, dude? Companies might, but individuals probably give a rat's ass. So why leave that comment?

And just for the record, if you quote someone, quote them verbatim, otherwise it is not a quote.

Breath.

Been there, done that.

That said, I agree that it is my fault that self-contradicting virtue signaling hypocrites always find a way to irk me.

And I think it is good for the world to know that the LICENSE often means jack shit, unless when companies of significant size are involved.

Again, we all agree that they put it there to cover their own asses, not that Europeans cannot download, install, and run their product, right?

Yes we’re all aware of the unlimited rights of Europeans, including subjecting the rest of the world to annoying cookie notifications.

Europeans definitely do not have unlimited rights, and I do not agree with the annoying cookie crap either.

It's probably the inverse:

they might license it to companies in the US, but don't want to have to deal with the changes and bureucracy needed to support individuals.

The statement's purpose is to say the equivalent "if you're a European and do run it, it's on you, this is not a product we release or support for the European market, don't expert support, liability, etc".

I get that. What I do not get it some other commenters "scaring" Europeans attempting (or thinking) to run this product.

I mean, this other commenter literally said:

> You'll be both breaking their licence and potentially your local European data laws.

I'm really torn on the whole thing. I consider myself a patriotic American and would never do anything to undermine the security of my country or its allies (using the same definition of national security that the serious sworn oaths use, "all enemies foreign and domestic", which makes NSA backdoors that compromise American devices squarely a "domestic enemy").

But loyalties don't change facts and China is where serious hackers are rising on merit, doing a lot with limited resourves, giving zero fucks about empty slick talk.

If we wanted to hobble the PRC's technical rise we should have subsidized wasteful NVIDIA use and had Altman/YC be in charge: they'd still be gladhanding about how to pump their portfolio companies sticker price and avoid "systemic shocks" to the stock market anchored on NVDA.

Just for the record, I would never run this product, but it has nothing to do with the LICENSE itself.

Well, people say such things even for watching pirated shows, which to be truthful, almost everybody does...

Some just are narc types.

Why would they open themselves up to liability in the rest of the world where it is allowed?

For those that would not remember, this was a real thing in the late 80s and 90s relating the cryptography.

There were serious laws limiting the export a "modern" cryptography software from the USA.

Some of us had to face up to the serious challenge of connecting to an FTP server and downloading PGP and risking violating US law to download a software package.

A few years later we had to decide "Do you want the secure Netscape, or the insecure Netscape?".

I'm sure we all chose the ethical choice.

You should elaborate on this for the unacquainted.

See the PC Era section of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

Thank you.

Legalese and licenses aren't to make sure no X will download/install/or run something.

It's to make it a matter of legal record that you stated they should abstain.

I know. That is why I do not get what is the big fuss about.

Most companies abide the law. So no self hosted LLM for europeans.

... what? Self-hosted LLMs are precisely for individuals.

A lot of companies and research institutes in the EU would like to be able to use a locally hosted LLM for their employees so they don't have to worry what data they give away.

Also it is not rational for any individual to buy the hardware for running a serious LLM and then let it idle 99.9% of the day.

Why would not these companies or research institutes in the EU not be able to run locally hosted LLMs for their employees though?

What model do you propose that is close enough to chatgpt or Claude so people will actually use it for their work?

I am not up to date with the models, but I have heard good stories about a couple of open source models. You should ask Simon Willis. I hope he will be summoned (@simonw).

It was my point that currently the best open weight models are from China, so not usable in the EU.

But of course the world changes so rapidly that what is now is irrelevant tomorrow.

Try selling pirated copies and see what the warnings are really about.

When CDs and DVDs were a thing people wanted, there were people selling pirated copies on every corner, so...

I wonder if you'd say the same if the license were coming from Microsoft of Apple...

Why would I not? Of course I would.

A lot of companies and research institutes in the EU would like to be able to use a locally hosted LLM for their employees so they don't have to worry what data they give away.

They will certainly not violate EU laws and also probably not the licence.

It's plausible deniability. Someone at Huawei presumably thinks there's a chance that exporting this to Europe might be a legal problem at some point in the future. So they added a restriction, enough for plausible deniability.

It's not exactly "plausible deniability" in the common sense of the term.

It's not supposed to make them appear as plausibly denying that some European can download and use this.

It's role is to signal that if someone does, it's on him, not them, and he wont have any support, liability claims, etc as if they could if it was a product intended for their use.

Quite a few, actually.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com