Replies

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  Christine Lemmer-Webbercwebber@social.coop

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:29 PM

  Thanks also @davidrevoy for inspiring adding such a notice https://framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy/117440226629383529

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  Christine Lemmer-Webbercwebber@social.coop

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:37 PM

  Btw I have heard at least one prominent FOSS person (I'm choosing to not fill their notifications here by identifying them) that nobody cares about attribution requirements (and particularly not enforcing them). But to me, attribution is what I care about MORE than any other licensing requirements, more than copyleft "share-alike" style provisions, etc.

  If you feel similarly, it would be good to hear on this thread. Perhaps even copying a similar notice into your project is a good idea.

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  dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:42 PM

  @cwebber For my fonts (the only kind of creative work I still share), I've been using a license that is basically only about attribution. Informally: You can do whatever you want, as long as 1. you don't claim that you made my work, 2. you don't claim that I made your work.

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  _Έλλεν Εμίλια Ά. Arson ζ.fogti@chaos.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:42 PM

  @cwebber I agree. I extremely dislike copyright (and would like it to be abolished even if that makes copyleft licenses (even more) useless), but I think that attribution and often also proper citation/references is extremely important.

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  ArneBabArneBab@rollenspiel.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:51 PM

  @fogti I care about both copyleft and attribution.

  Which is why the libre #roleplaying #game I’ve been working on for over two decades now¹² has a seven page thank you section, including four pages of attribution for artists.

  And naturally sticks to the licenses they use.

  And it’s why I make sure to only use creations under compatible licenses.

  And this is what I expect from others, too.

  ¹ https://www.1w6.org
  ² source: https://hg.sr.ht/~arnebab/ews/browse

  @cwebber

  #rpg #gpl #1w6

  

  

  

  
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  ArneBabArneBab@rollenspiel.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:53 PM

  @fogti the reason why copyleft is important is that there are technical means to make it neigh impossible to create derivative works.

  Abolishing copyright would therefore require to have a rule that every creation has to be accompanied with the preferred form to make modifications to it.

  @cwebber

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  _Έλλεν Εμίλια Ά. Arson ζ.fogti@chaos.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:19 PM

  @ArneBab Calling a set of laws technical (in contrast to what it imo actually is: a social technology) when the only way it can be enacted (e.g. in contrast to cryptography) is through courts, seems absurd to me.

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  ArneBabArneBab@rollenspiel.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:29 PM

  @fogti I’m not talking about laws. See https://rollenspiel.social/@ArneBab/117441148957636180

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  _Έλλεν Εμίλια Ά. Arson ζ.fogti@chaos.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:37 PM

  @ArneBab Having source available is neither sufficient (although/especially lack of attribution makes it worse), nor necessary (due to the ability to disassemble code).

  And given that the "open source" is very often still based upon paywalled papers and standards, and often also hidden documentation (/ documentation licensed in a way that makes usage in source code difficult), I don't consider it sufficient anymore. It isn't sufficiently pervasive.

  Source code is an intermediate representation

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  ArneBabArneBab@rollenspiel.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:39 PM

  @fogti I disagree.

  Having the source available may not be sufficient, but it is often necessary.

  Disassembling code does not recover comments and also misses a lot of other context.

  But I gave that argument in a more general way in the other toot:
  https://rollenspiel.social/@ArneBab/117441148957636180

  Source code is the preferred form of making modifications to something – as the GPLv3 succinctly defines it.

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  Luna Dragofelis ΘΔ🏳️‍⚧️🐱LunaDragofelis@void.lgbt

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:23 PM

  @ArneBab @fogti @cwebber yeah, but without copyright it would also be very much legal to crack the DRM and distribute the cracked version
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  ArneBabArneBab@rollenspiel.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:28 PM

  @LunaDragofelis This is not about DRM. It is about only sharing obfuscated, compiled code that you may be able to mod, but not to improve efficiently.

  Or only sharing a squashed image while you yourself use the multilayer source instead that you did not share.

  Or only sharing the final encoded version of a song while you retain the multitrack master to rework it regularly.

  Or only sharing low-quality screenshots of a book you create from Emacs orgmode sources you keep private.
  @fogti @cwebber

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  Nora Tindallnoracodes@tenforward.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:43 PM

  @cwebber I absolutely agree.

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  Nantucket Litnantucketlit@mastodon.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:45 PM

  @cwebber What I've found, at least in writing, is that people want to be recognized for what they've made, and properly credited.

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  David Fi&erdjfiander@code4lib.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:46 PM

  @cwebber attribution in licenses is how UC Berkeley brought down AT&T and the UNIX System Labs.

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  Ihor Radchenko (yantar92)yantar92@fosstodon.org

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:49 PM

  @cwebber What if the attribution is then done to every piece of training data? That's not impossible if the training data is known, but will it be acceptable?

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  Li ~ Crystal SystemLi@tech.lgbt

  Oct 16, 2026, 7:31 PM

  @yantar92 @cwebber

  .. no the collection of training data is a problem because of the massive amount of strain it places on infrastructure set for the commons that makes it impossible for anyone else to access, and becuase its appropriating the commons then selling it back to you,

  which still has nothing to do w copyright.

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  Ihor Radchenko (yantar92)yantar92@fosstodon.org

  Oct 16, 2026, 7:45 PM

  @Li @cwebber Not all the training data is putting strain. There are training datasets that were crawled respecting robots.txt.

  I am most interested in the scenario when there is a training dataset (crawled once without hitting servers repeatedly), and used for open weight model.

  Open data+weight still does not address attribution. That's why my question.

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  Li ~ Crystal SystemLi@tech.lgbt

  Oct 16, 2026, 7:50 PM

  @yantar92 @cwebber robots.txt is kind of for 20 different purposes, like e.g to know what parts of your site are pointless to try access (like things behind a login or paywall or something) so dont bother, its also things you want to be delisted from the site and also apparently also things you dont want used for training (which is still an opt out and thus manufactured consent but ok)

  also thats still ignoring every other issue AI has thats not related to training data, it has a bad impact on people and the world as a whole too.

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  Ihor Radchenko (yantar92)yantar92@fosstodon.org

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:01 PM

  @Li @cwebber Sure. But I am asking about very specific issue - attribution.

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  Li ~ Crystal SystemLi@tech.lgbt

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:03 PM

  @yantar92 @cwebber no your using someone saying attribution is an issue; then going "oh if we just do attribution then its acceptable" no, its not because its not the only issue

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  Ihor Radchenko (yantar92)yantar92@fosstodon.org

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:05 PM

  @Li @cwebber I am not interested to discuss other problems with LLMs here. I am only looking to see about attribution specifically.

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  Li ~ Crystal SystemLi@tech.lgbt

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:06 PM

  @yantar92 @cwebber cool? then your question is dishonest- they still dont exist in a vaccum despite your insistence to say that they do,

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  Ihor Radchenko (yantar92)yantar92@fosstodon.org

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:17 PM

  @Li @cwebber Yet, the question about attribution can be addressed independently. I am not sure what is dishonest about this.

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  Li ~ Crystal SystemLi@tech.lgbt

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:24 PM

  @yantar92 @cwebber your asking if you just add attributiion will ai be acceptable. the answer is no- because of reasons other than attribution, but then you refuse to address those. and say your "only about attribution"

  how is that not dishonest?

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  Li ~ Crystal SystemLi@tech.lgbt

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:29 PM

  @yantar92 @cwebber

  like ok ..
  "if we pretend every other issue doesn't exist, and then solve this one specific one you brought up, is it fine now?"

  .. no. because of the issues you pretend dont exist.

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  Ihor Radchenko (yantar92)yantar92@fosstodon.org

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:38 PM

  @Li @cwebber I did not imply that solving attribution automatically resolves every other issue. I am asking about specific thing - AI not propertly attributing its sources used for the output. That's a concrete problem. I asked if attributing to *all* sources is good.engough to solve this particular problem.

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  Li ~ Crystal SystemLi@tech.lgbt

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:40 PM

  @yantar92 @cwebber 'if i only consider this one issue, then solve that issue, is that issue solved' you answered your own question and is pointless to ask, other than as to try give ai legitimacy. -- still dishonest,

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  Ihor Radchenko (yantar92)yantar92@fosstodon.org

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:43 PM

  @Li @cwebber I conclude from your answer that referring to all sources, even not really used in the specific output is practically solving attribution (at least, from your perspective). I'd like to point out that may or may not be enough for other people who are looking for their work to be attributed.

  So, no, I did not say "consider one issue, then solve that issue". What I proposed may or may not be a solution.

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  Li ~ Crystal SystemLi@tech.lgbt

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:43 PM

  @yantar92 @cwebber how is attributing something, not solving the issue, of having no attribution, that makes no sense.

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  Ihor Radchenko (yantar92)yantar92@fosstodon.org

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:48 PM

  @Li @cwebber Let's me give you exaggregated example - what if every slop code starts to attribute *every possible website on the internet*. Or even non-slop code using a code licensed with attribution does not attribute just to that code, but also to 1000 other codes (that have very little to do with this non-slop code). That feels not exactly right, although might technically fulfill the license. But maybe that's just me.

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  Li ~ Crystal SystemLi@tech.lgbt

  Oct 16, 2026, 8:53 PM

  @yantar92 @cwebber oh thats what you mean, yeah thats not obvious at all from what you said,

  but also movies and books and such have for awhile includes a "special thanks" section of ppl who were not actually really involved at all,

  and tbh over-attribution is usually not a problem- agree it feels kinda shit here

  however i will note that in movies and books and such attribution is usually also in context, of like "these ppl filmed it, these ppl did sfx, this ppl wrote the script.. " etc. which AI doesn't really do that, nor can it, in this case its not even that they "did" it, really its like "??? (edited? generated? idfk how you'd even describe what AI does) from this work here from this person here"

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  Ihor Radchenko (yantar92)yantar92@fosstodon.org

  Oct 16, 2026, 9:03 PM

  @Li @cwebber That's what I thought rightaway after I came up with this idea with overattribution. Obvious for me, and I wanted to see if it is the same for others. (It is not).

  For the attribution context, one can always invent new word for it (like "statistically inspired" of whatever).

  The bigger issue is for authors who may not even care about open source, but just want attribution to see usefulness of their work. Over-attribution is an insult for them.

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  ferunandogureito@mastodon.gamedev.place

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:48 PM

  @cwebber yep. same 👍️

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  (roll m3tti)m3tti@functional.cafe

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:52 PM

  @cwebber attribution is the single most valuable thing a person or a project could get imho. But i guess this is due to the fact the most of the tech persons in the past were either academics or people with high hacker ethics. I miss the times were tech especially in opensource was about getting the badge to be a smartass or a project everyone looks up to. Nowadays even opensource projects just try to be funded or bought by a third party

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  aevaaeva@mastodon.gamedev.place

  Oct 14, 2026, 7:54 PM

  @cwebber I've always considered it to be important to respect even when it is optional. Tangerine had an attribution page that reproduced the license/copyright notices for the entire dependency graph. I had all the dependencies vendored, so the page was generated automatically from the sources. Mollytime will have a similar feature (eventually) once we're done rebuilding the UI and I figure out a way to do it without vendoring everything.

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  aevaaeva@mastodon.gamedev.place

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:12 PM

  @cwebber i think over the decades my hopes for my FOSS work burned down from a big important career making big important things, to hoping anyone at all finds my stuff to be useful for something, to i guess i can entertain a few dozen people for a few minutes every now and then, to ok i get it pausing your music to listen to worse music is too much to ask, to, look, i drew some pictures do you like pictures

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  aevaaeva@mastodon.gamedev.place

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:15 PM

  @cwebber and the idea that the outcome of this is my work being slurped up into a training set for my contributions to be misattributed to the theft machine, and nobody knowing i exist is not ok

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  aevaaeva@mastodon.gamedev.place

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:18 PM

  @cwebber but ultimately i'm not interested in taking anyone to court. i don't have the money to burn for that, and the impact on my health would probably be unlikely to have been worth it to me. so all i get out of a license is a statement of intent. people generally are good about respecting the intent of the license, so that's worked out well so far (even if it's been mostly not applicable anyway). but these ai companies don't give a shit, and i'm at a loss of what to do about it

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  Steve Purcellsanityinc@hachyderm.io

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:06 PM

  @cwebber If someone publishes something very clearly based on my work (or someone else's) I will be disproportionately offended if there's no attribution, because it's rude.

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  algernon, alleged master chefalgernon@come-from.mad-scientist.club

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:08 PM

  @cwebber I share a similar stance. While I strongly prefer share-alike provisions, attribution is by far the most important. When I chose my preferred post-floss license1, I chose one2 that has no share-alike clause, but does have an attribution one.

  1. Because while I like the idea of FLOSS, I absolutely do not like that I can't restrict who can use my software. ↩︎

  2. Filthy Human Hands ↩︎

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  :: Asta ::aud@spectre.asta.lgbt

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:15 PM

  @cwebber Attribution is pretty much the only thing I ever cared about (and I still care about it, very much).  I also do not believe prominent people when they say they "don't care" about attribution.  Like, really?  So if someone had never credited your work your entire career and/or claimed it for themselves, you think you'd be in the same position as you are now?   Or is attribution only important when you're on your way up the ladder?
  
  I have a *lot* of feelings on attribution, in fact.

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  :: Asta ::aud@spectre.asta.lgbt

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:16 PM

  @cwebber Honestly, for a more negative take, any prominent individual in a community who says that "attribution doesn't matter" immediately sets off alarm bells in my head.

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  Octobers Georguep@timeloop.cafe

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:45 PM

  @aud @cwebber I care more, or mostly, about giving proper attribution for my inputs and sources (in both the foss and academic/research senses) than I do about asserting or defending my own. That's a focus on expectations and standards of behaviour, rather than a mechanism of enforcement. Unfortunately one requires the other, and any pretense of good behaviour without enforcement has been lost.

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  CyrikCyrikCroc@dragonchat.org

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:15 PM

  @cwebber Too many folks in and around FOSS think "nobody has taken enforcement action over this, therefore nobody actually cares about it." It's wrong and it signals that the person is thinking about FOSS in terms of what they can extract rather than a collaboration among peers.

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  Jens Finkhäuserjens@social.finkhaeuser.de

  Oct 15, 2026, 4:11 AM

  @CyrikCroc @cwebber this!

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  allisonaparrish@friend.camp

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:21 PM

  @cwebber i'm an artist/academic/educator and i consider making foss to be a part of my practice. any kind of attribution helps me to make the case that my work has "impact" which in turn helps me to keep my job. a lot of foss projects that are related to academia in some way will request that papers resulting from research that makes use of the project include an actual bibliographical citation—i assume for similar reasons. tbh i think this prominent foss person is full of it

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  fellhouseaudioxinniw@post.lurk.org

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:17 PM

  @cwebber attribution seems like the most basic social reciprocity available and, as you mentioned, probably the most important. "where did you get *awesome idea from*? "oh *awesom idea* came from *this person*. aren't they neat?"

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  MaddieM4MaddieM4@raphus.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:33 PM

  @xinniw @cwebber I've drawn this comparison before, and I'm sure I will again, but the very first Easter Eggs in video games were... credits.

  Why were they credits? Because Atari didn't want to include credit to the people who made the game. And you can't tell that story without it being intuitively obvious that Atari were being indefensible assholes. And now every video game has credits in it - most people won't pay too much attention to the contents, but the record is still important to the people who actually worked to make the thing, and to the people who love those people. The sky didn't fall from credits existing. The world got a little better actually.

  But the capitalist incentive to alienate people from their labor, and consumers from the humanity of the people making their stuff, has never *stopped.* LLMs are just the next chapter of the story, the throughline of indefensible assholes that want to model labor as anonymous and interchangeable cogs, especially erasing minorities from history.

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  Filipfnohe@ohai.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:34 PM

  @xinniw
  There's a reason it's the essential requirement for all Creative Commons licenses
  @cwebber

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  James Smith 💾Floppy@mastodon.me.uk

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:25 PM

  @cwebber absolutely, attribution is the most important part of the whole thing. Citing your sources seems to me to be one of the most basic parts of human decency.

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  allisonaparrish@friend.camp

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:28 PM

  @Floppy @cwebber tech bros will really ruin the internet by turning it into history's hottest n spiciest spreadsheet instead of showing the tiniest amount of gratitude to anyone

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  Send Cookiesotfrom@functional.cafe

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:28 PM

  @cwebber I care about attribution

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  bribrhfl@digipres.club

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:30 PM

  @cwebber i don’t code in any meaningful sense (thankfully) but unless the point is some sort of ephemeral anonymity, attribution is generally the thing i care most about with the art i do put out into the world.

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  Send Cookiesotfrom@functional.cafe

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:35 PM

  @cwebber and I feel some people really tell on themselves with their attitudes towards consent and truth

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  leeinherentlee@flipping.rocks

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:36 PM

  @cwebber don't give a shit about copyright but yes attribution is meaningful to me - as others have said respect is important, plus i want to give people ways to learn more if i learned. we exist in a social web and recognizing that web is valuable for us and others

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  Tim Chasegumnos@bsd.cafe

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:38 PM

  @cwebber

  I tend to release things under ISC/MIT/BSD (2-clause) type licenses because attribution is nice—theoretically required by the licenses—and more significant to me than any share-alike terms. But in the end, I'm more interested in solving problems and sharing those solutions. And similar to @datarama's insightful reply, "as long as 1. you don't claim that you made my work, 2. you don't claim that I made your work."

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  iliailia@phpc.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:38 PM

  @cwebber It is an interesting thought & problem.

  The issue with any licensing is firstly enforceability & legality. Just because you put something in a license file doesn't mean you can enforce (as in courts would rule in your favour).

  Big OSS licenses have the advantage of being legally verified and supported by precedent.

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  Christine Lemmer-Webbercwebber@social.coop

  Oct 14, 2026, 8:40 PM

  @ilia These clauses already exist in prominent, and previously enforced, licenses. We didn't add anything, just called attention to the clauses.

  (And yes, I have done a substantial amount of work on FOSS licensing issues.)

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  iliailia@phpc.social

  Oct 14, 2026, 9:18 PM

  @cwebber ah, good to know, thanks for clarifying IANAL n'all that...

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