If this is suddenly being weaponised against us, I don't see how that's not a problem.
If what I'm doing is interesting or unusual, LLMs will firstly not recognize that it's different, secondly will screw up when blindly combining it with stuff that isn't different, and thirdly if it's smart enough to not screw that up, it will ignore my work in favor of stealing from CLOSED source repos it gains access to, on the rationale that those are more valuable because they are guarded.
And I'm pretty sure that they're scraping private repos already because that seems the maximally evil and greedy thing to do, so as a FOSS guy I figure I'm already covered, protected by a counterproductive but knowingly evil behavior.
These are not smart systems, but even more they are not wise systems, so even if they gain smarts that doesn't mean they become a problem for me. More likely they become a problem for people who lean on intellectual property and privacy, and I took a pretty substantial pay cut to not have to lean on those things.
If it took some people in the FOSS space this long that it also includes people, companies or purposes they disagree with, then I don't know what to tell them.
That's like saying "I have the freedom to kill you".
Saying that you can create something, then you reserve the 'freedom' to limit what everyone else does for it really doesn't fall under the word freedom at all.
The software creator (human or AI) must give the user of its software the same freedoms it has received.
If it has received the freedom to view the original, readable, source code, then users should have the freedom to view the original, readable, source code.
If it has received the freedom to modify the source code, then users should have the freedom to modify the source code.
Etc.
It's not hard to follow for people who want to do the moral thing.
It's VERY hard to follow for people who want to make money (and ideally lots of it, very quickly).
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software [...] to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software [...]
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
[1]: https://mit-license.org/ [2]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#four-freedoms [3]: https://opensource.org/osd
While "use for any purpose" has been included, I think considering purpose is a natural extension of this concept. Suppose there were some software project that aimed to practically eliminate the ability for users to share and use free or open software as it is today. Is it more free to allow such a project to be unrestricted from using other software, even if that project would lead to the destruction of free software otherwise?
It is pretty obvious to me, that being blase about whomever using FOSS for adversarial reasons is not very "open" or "free". Somewhere in the thread there is an argument about the paradox of intolerance and I don't really care to argue with people on the internet about it because it is hard to assume the debate is in good faith.
My point is this: Throw away all your self described nuance and ask this yourself whether or not you think any malicious, war-monger, authoritarian, or hyper-capitalist state would permit a free and open source software environment? If the objective of a business, government, or billionaire is power, control, and/or exclusivity then, well, your lofty ideals behind FOSS have completely collapsed.