You must log in or # to comment.
Out of my 33 public repositories, they only scraped the 7 oldest, pointless ones. Weird.
Thats why you write your projects now, download all weights locally and never look back.
For posterity huggingface is terrible. If you need it. Even codebergs new changes are a disaster in teh making The days of “if its on the internet” are now your own responsibilty.
Love how things are being rewritten on the fly now… Even better, lets scrape and “selfimprove”… WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong
If someone wants to scrap the shitty ass code I have on GitHub, have at it. Talk about poisoning AI
Get off of Github if you think this is a problem 🤷 There are alternatives like Forgejo (Codeberg), Gitlab, and Radicle (decentralised).
Those are obviously scraped as well?
Genuinely surprised it’s even opt-out.
These companies train on Disney DVDs. Permission is not a factor. Training is transformative use, as much for counting letter frequency as for building a chatbot that can sort of code.
no, officer, you misunderstand! I’m not pirating this movie, I’m just training my intelligence on it! it is transformative use, see, I can now write you this summary!
Quoting one sentence from a book is fair use even if you shoplifted that book.
meanwhile I’m just here scraping GitHub repos for API keys and credentials 🤷♂️
Looks for my username. Sees my 8 open repositories in there. Sees my poorly coded Uni projects are also in there.
Oh lord my code is actively helping making AI worse.
Oh lord my code is actively helping making AI worse.
I checked out, it has some of my repositories. They crawled this stuff in 2025 and they probably won’t update it. Whoever uses this dataset will have to deal with some super garbage, I tell ya.
Mission failed successfully!
Glad to be part of the crew with shitty code in Github to taint them plagiarism machines!
90% of the code in my GitHub was written while I was stoned out of my mind, so I’m probably helping, too.
I’m doing my part!
Literally all LLMs are affected by GIGO. This is why everything it outputs sounds like a redditor.
you joke but someone has actually traced to one of my commits a specific behavior that people on the internet have been complaining from LLMs recently.
How did you hear about that? I can’t imagine the odds, haha.
A friend of a friend saw the blog post about it and recognized the project name.
Can you share the blog? This is so funny
Woo! My crappy code and group projects are in there too!
May all AI generated code be in one giant main loop thanks to my influence 😈
Thinking back to the sins I’ve committed in C# as a high schooler… maybe I should start publishing my works. Put some poison in the soup.
Hope some group makes it their mission to start flooding github with garbage code.
Microsoft is already working hard on this by shoving AI in everyone’s faces
For some reason the included only the repo for my github profile that has no code in it and not the other ones, my guess is that they avoided me because of the GPL license on all my code
Spoiler
also, some repositories were my first projects so they are way more shit than the avarage AI code and it would be funny if they poisoned themselves and i have some archived project that also have shit code but only on github because i switched to codeberg and rewrote them
In theory, it’s all supposed to be permissively licenced code and the opt out is more than other models give. I saw Starcoder as one of the more ethical models. I thought the underlying principals to be fair at least.
I’m interested in this gut hostility to it regardless. Kind of shows how you can’t present LLMs in a positive angle no matter what.
Kind of shows how you can’t present
LLMsharvesting peoples data without consent or even warning and making it difficult to impossible for people to avoid it in a positive angle no matter what.Fixed it for you.
An LLM built from only consensually provided data would be perfectly fine, as long as it works without environmentally ruinous data centers.
In fact, that was how EVERY LLM was to begin with, until regulatory capture and corporate impunity reached the current crescendo.
But if it’s permissively licenced, couldn’t I just copy bits and pieces for my own project without asking?
Like I understand asking is always better and an opt in process for “the stack” or wtv would have been better received. Nevertheless, did they really have a legal obligation, rather than moral obligation, to ask given how this is licensed?
Taking GPL code would be a different situation right? They would have to also include it in their model creation… which theoretically they just could.
You can’t use GPL for LLMs if you don’t include a copy of the GPL license or link to the GPL license, you would also have to deal with conflicting licenses, somehow
Most of those “permissive” licenses require redistributors to redistribute copies of the license texts in derivative works.
But I bet these AI models aren’t doing that. And it’s a damn neat certainty that the vibe coders who use the AI model are not attaching a license disclosure containing every permissive licenses in GitHub. Even if their vibe coded app is arguably a derivative work.
…do you know what the word “consensually” means? 🤦🏻
I do not believe a permissive license has any notion of consent. You can’t stop someone from forking your code as long as they follow the rules of the license, like crediting you.
Even in GPL, you can’t stop someone from using your code, see Gnome’s recent arguements with Mint over their usage of an old version of their Calender app.
Others in the thread have mentioned we’ll see permissive licenses with exceptions for Ai in the near future. It’s a solution because that door is currently open.
I do not believe a permissive license has any notion of consent. You can’t stop someone from forking your code as long as they follow the rules of the license, like crediting you.
Does the LLM ever credit the original author when it spits out code?
You can’t stop someone from forking your code as long as they follow the rules of the license, like crediting you
In that case,though, you’re still respecting the wishes of the person applying that permissive license consensually, though.
That’s VERY different from mass harvesting all data without permission (or credit) for profit, which would probably be against the terms of even the most permissive licenses.
Their claim was they followed the licenses and only used code they were implicitly allowed to use. I’d like to see if that was just astroturf and bullshit.
Honestly, though this is one of the reasons why people prefer copyleft and avoid permissive licenses, because yeah anyone can profit monetarily off your work otherwise.
Their claim was they followed the licenses and only used code they were implicitly allowed to use
Was likely bullshit. Just like just about everything else people behind for profit LLMs say about their business practices.
I’d like to see if that was just astroturf and bullshit.
Almost certainly
You can host copyleft as well as all rights reserved code on GitHub. It’s not like Codeberg.
Yeah, they aren’t supposed to scrape that stuff. That’s kind of where I’m wondering if they limited their collections.
Well, they included some MPL 2.0 repos of mine at least, but skipped others that use GPL3. Yet another that is a mirror of some otherwise lost firmware files for early 2000s wifi cards (and definitely isn’t free software) is also included.
So possibly they filter out GPL2/3 specifically, rather than only include known permissive licenses. Which is a pretty bad way of doing it.
Okay, I see you, I think I may have misunderstood how you were phrasing it. Thinking you were saying they were scanning all of GitHub because it’s all permissive.
We’ll they said they only scanned stuff that would have allowed them implicitly, now did they really respect that? Their ‘‘stack’’ is public, so people can review it. It’s opensource, people can audit it at least.
The big giants can lift whatever they want from Github and we wouldn’t have the means to prove it. I’m sure Microsoft is using private repos as they like. It’s not a coincidence that Copilot was one of the earlier coding LLMs.
Machine learning is more than just “transformative use” and is not copying. Currently that is only like 98% true, because memorization does occur in a few cases. Like 0.8-2% and that number is probably less now 2 years later than that study. Ultimately once they fix the memorization issue and “purge” these memories and can no longer reproduce licensed code (which is mostly textbook examples and boilerplate code or very popular code) this will be true transformative learning.
Then they do not require any more permission to read and learn from a book or from code than a human would. As long as you own a book or have the right to read something, you’re allowed to do whatever you want with the knowledge you gained.
I don’t see a problem as long as they stick to AGPL when building a product out of it
Edit: Oh they also scraped my proprietary code 🧐
They also scrapped my GPL code, apparently
So they scrapped stuff that wasn’t permissive? Interesting… though not really surprising.
Also, all this reminds me of drama in the Skyrim and Minecraft modding scenes, when devs publish stuff under Apache or MIT or whatever.
Then the devs find out they don’t like what others are doing with their code. Drama ensues.
…That’s kinda the deal with permissive licenses. Or posting publicly, like here on Lemmy. People will do things you don’t like with your code or content.
Eh, I don’t think it’s hypocritical to contribute to a commons and then get mad when someone comes along and tries to use the commons to undermine the commons.
Like yes, the commons is there to be used… but not to kill the commons.
https://www.citationneeded.news/free-and-open-access-in-the-age-of-generative-ai/
The most important thing is to protect the people’s right to use open source / weight AI models without licensing. Because the AI companies permanently monopolizing AI models and collecting rent forever on the commons, that would be a tragedy. It would forever shift the balance of power to use advanced technology.
I’m not using AI.
Well truly profitable applications for LLMs are pretty limited so far, but they will come. Lets say you can replace a tax advisor / accountant with a specialized LLM agent (one that doesn’t hallucinate tax code lol). Imagine oyu have an open source project that uses a coding AI agent to frequently update and retrain the tax LLM with the new regulations and laws and unit tests all this. So it’s ultimately easy to use, you just talk to the tax AI agent. Or alternatively, because they managed to make open weight LLMs illegal because they are piracy because they use books and posts without permission to train and can’t afford to pay the license fees. Now everybody has to use a commercial AI tax service. At the same price at what it cost previously to hire a real human.
As AI models get better they replace human labor. This is a problem under capitalism, otherwise we could just all just be working less and chill. But it gets even worse if “we” (like the 99%) can’t make use of open source models. Then the plutocrats get to own this newly replaced labor as free labor and collect rent.
This is why I believe the IP argument of anti-AI is so dangerous. They can afford to pay license fees, we / open source can’t. See patents, or see healthcare insurance purposefully making healthcare costs go up.
That’s all well and good, but AI makes me want to die, so I’m not using it.
It’s kind of a tragedy if you think about it
Really? In front of my Elinor Ostrom poster?
LLMs training on data don’t prevent anyone from themselves learning on that data, so I don’t see how the commons is going to be killed here.
It heavily dampens the feedback loops which lead to new contributors joining. If more people feel encouraged to just let an LLM hack something for them then fewer things are learned by fewer people, less knowledge is developed and propagated, etc…
And more of that which was shared is worse because there’s no quality control in those sharing pipelines, and ironically more ego behind it when the sharer has done less (see: that person in the group project who did nothing useful and took all credit)
Nah if you’re a massive AI company and you scrape without contribution, you’re a huge piece of shit.
It’s just stealing plain and simple like anything else.
They’re not a small user getting open source software, they’re scraping what is already done to try and make you obsolete.
There are permissive licenses, and then there are copyleft licenses. Permissive licenses go in the direction of “do whatever the fuck you want”. Copyleft licenses are more like “use it for whatever the fuck you want but if you change it give it back to everyone else with the same conditions”. The people who have projects with copyleft licenses are the ones who are (rightfully) pissed about their projects being used to train AI.
Huggingface isn’t violating copyleft licenses here, I don’t think. And research projects that use it, with citations and documentation, wouldn’t either.
Now, if some business comes along and tries to make proprietary code derived from the dataset, that’s where things get hairy. But the people doing that are responsible for the potential violation, not Huggingface.
They’re violating proprietary licenses at the very least
“Look, I wrote this neat highly advanced machine vision thing to help people with accessibility needs communicate with loved ones! ❤️. MIT licensed I guess! Let’s make the world better!”
Raytheon, Northropp, Boeing, Microsoft, three-letter-agencies suddenly fork it as a base for their own “projects.”
😐
There’s some stuff I also would like to work on adjacent to these things but the risk outweigh the good for as long as these psychotic people are in charge (and some things will just generally always be risky).
Institutions with monopoly on violence or companies that they deal with don’t care whether software is released as MIT or AGPL, they just take it and build on it. (Maybe that’s exactly what you mean though, I’m not sure.)
Hehe yeah I guess that’s what I meant. Just making a statement on how software has become I guess, and maybe a bit about how highly permissive licenses might have unintended consequences.
The open source spirit is one of the shining jewels of the human race, but it really sucks that I don’t think any of those “You aren’t allowed to use my code to make the world a worse place” clauses would actually hold up. =\
On the other hand, totally did not see this particular shit coming. I wonder if we’ll see a rash of “permissive, except LLMs can fuck right off” licenses.
Permissive licences should be the ones to fuck off entirely. GPL or death
I will use whatever the fuck license I want to for my projects
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is a place for permissive licenses. A great example is reference code for open standards, eg. TCP/IP.
Permissive licences are useful compared to copyleft ones only for unfree actors, which we should fight integrally at every step of the way
No, libraries should remain permissive IMO. Applications can be restrictive if they want to. I just don’t see any point in a copyleft library or framework.
No unfree application should ideally be allowed ever again
World runs on them though. I don’t mean business to consumer shit, all that can rot in hell. I mean business to business. There’s shit out there that’s incredibly niche, takes a ton of effort to develop, and there’s no way it would ever be achieved without a huge financial incentive (because it’s just so niche and it turns out paying tens or hundreds of people takes money). And someone’s gotta pay the people writing all your open source code so most of them need day jobs anyway, which will be difficult to have without any commercial software existing. Sometimes the “all our code is GPL, but you can pay us to host it for you” model works, but a lot of the time it doesn’t.
You’ll take my code and have a nice life or so help me!
Right, I mean I literally published my code openly, so idc lol
…and now, suddenly, github being overrun by vibecoded garbage isn’t so bad
AI will poison itself trust, like when it links AI made articles.
Bad News: My old GitHub repos are there.
Good News: I wrote that shit when I was 12. The code runs, but it’s not good and not inventive.
For me, they only have one of my repos, and I deleted all my repos months ago, so whether they actually have the code or just the title idk
Good news: If anyone wants the one they got, I host it myself here instead. Fuck M$, AI thieves etc.
I mean they can probably steal it from my site too but I’ve taken precautions, and the second biggest reason to migrate off corpo accounts entirely – my site is a much smaller hacker target than Github.
Reposted on instance with likely more reach
Time to leave malicious code for Claud in git hub projects.
I’m doing my part by already writing shitty code.
I’m not much of a programmer, but why arern’t more people just using GitLab instead of GitHub?
Network effect / discoverability and free CI time
Why go from corporate to corporate platform? Codeberg exists.
Self hosted gitlab is pretty nice, sucks that some features are still paywalled and it’s been getting somewhat bloated after 18.x tho
You can look into selfhosting Forgejo! No paywalls, and super fast, especially compared to Gitlab
Still learning git but apparently there’s some “power features”, and, aside from that, it’s the same BS network effect that keeps everyone on all the abusive platforms.
Discoverability, it’s where all the other people already stashed their code, sunk cost, etc…
Siiiigh…
Job recruiters get scared.
Afaik on github you get quite powerful runners for free
We’d have an even bigger RAM shortage if so.
Git repos don’t really take many resources to host, look at Forgejo, also, the RAM shortage is very much artificial, there is no lack of RAM, it’s just that it’s all being sold all to a few companies
Selfhosting Gitlab takes a bazillion RAMs lol. I think I got it up to 12gb idling without doing anything.
That’s why i talked of Forgejo
Well… I’d rather the dataset be public and there, with an actual opt-out, instead of every AI startup frantically rescraping the same things their predecessors did.
True, I understand why this is better than all those companies scraping it individually (for both ability to opt out and site load), but the way they handled opt out is still quite silly.
If they only include repositories that come with a proper open source license technically they don’t even need to provide an opt-out option. So, good thing that at least it exists.
EDIT: oops replied to wrong comment
Second that. After all all my open repositories are all either licenced under GPL or MIT, so complaining would be a kind of hypocritical.
GPL is dodgy to be included in training data for AIs that are then used to generate non-openaource code tbh. Even MIT loses the attribution it’s supposed to have once laundered through AI…
Speaking as someone that’s been into FOSS for a long time, it does piss me off how quickly copyright got thrown under the bus the moment it became inconvenient for people with money.
Yes, but what HuggingFace is doing here is the distribution of a data set. And so long the data set itself is open that doesn’t conflict with GPL. HuggingFace is not responsible about how others use that data set.
Whether LLMs themselves violate copyright for being trained on MIT or GPL code is an entirely different discussion.
