By that standard, couldn't I say you don't truly own open source software like Chromium or OpenSSL because very few are capable of understanding the codebase well enough to implement changes?
And there's a difference between few being capable of implementing changes, and anyone. In a world where most or all code is written and edited by LLMs, and CS courses are focused on how to prompt LLMs and no longer on fundamentals, the opportunities for humans to learn programming will all but vanish. And this assumes LLMs will even expose code at all. They may simply emit precompiled applications in the future. If humans remain in the loop even when LLMs are used then this becomes less of a problem. But the culture around LLMs converges on vibe-coding - as little direct human understanding or effort as possible. As such it converges on sacrificing freedom for convenience.
Last week, I've seen videos of people merging video games like Super Mario and Minecraft to create absurd new games that previously you wouldn't imagine anyone implementing because the cost/effort was prohibitive.
No, because they aren't modifying the software, a proprietary service is modifying the software. The freedom belongs to the company owning the LLM, not the person using it. If the freedom belonged to the person using it, then they would be able to exercise that freedom without an LLM. As they cannot, they did not in any way gain freedom by using the LLM.
If you think remixing games using an LLM is cool, I don't want to take that from you. It just isn't FOSS. The wholesale contempt that so many AI users have for human coding demonstrates that it's an entirely different culture with different ethics and different goals.
Personally I enjoyed building apps before AI, and have been doing so professionally for 10 years.
With AI it's much more fun for me since productivity is way up.
It's not that I have contempt for human coding, I just know from my own experience and hard work that using AI is much more productive.
People online constantly make comments where they insult my expertise and the quality of what I am building. Surely you can see how this could quickly lead to a heated discussion.
- the software would run only on your own server and clients will access it remotely through an interface
- you will sell the software together with the hardware and a proprietary operating system, which does not allow anyone to get the ones and zeros of your software
So, the only way to prevent GTA6 being "decompiled" and "forked" by AI models is to run it remotely (with a video interface), or sell it together with a proprietary console :D
not to mention there are alternative revenue sources anyways.
Most open source software is written by corporations which have a complimentary motive. Think hardware manufacturers writing drivers because it makes their products more saleable or Google writing Go because they needed a systems programming language.