MIT Non-AI License

17 points by dumindunuwan 142 days ago | 42 comments

Don't we have to ask for permission before feeding someone's years of work into an AI?

MIT NON-AI License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "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, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

1. The Software and any derivative works may not be used for the purposes of training, fine-tuning, or validating artificial intelligence models or machine learning algorithms without prior written permission from the copyright holders.

2. The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

HumanOstrich 142 days ago |

If you want to add restrictions to the MIT license, just don't use the MIT license or name it that way. Your change makes it no longer an open or permissive license so it's bizarre to keep the name. It would be like creating the MIT But-You-Have-To-Pay License.

throwawayqqq11 142 days ago | |

Then lets call this special license something like:

No-you-still-dont-have-to-pay-but-any-AI-use-is-restricted-license. 1 This way, everyone knows, its not as free as the MIT license and has absolutely no relation to it. /s

Ofcourse you can specialize existing licenses with limited paragraphs and reflect that in their names...

HumanOstrich 142 days ago | | |

I think you're missing the point of the MIT License and its history. If you want a proprietary license, "specializing" the MIT License for that is silly. My grandmother could specialize as a bicycle if I added wheels to her.

dumindunuwan 142 days ago | |

This is what any AI agent tells

HumanOstrich 142 days ago | | |

Yes, I'm a secret AI agent here to try and stop your powerful new licensing idea. /s

linkdd 141 days ago |

> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "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

Key words are:

  - permission is [...] granted
  - free of charge
  - without restriction
  - use, copy, …

Then:

> may not be used for the purposes of […]

The license contradicts itself.

> Don't we have to ask for permission before feeding someone's years of work into an AI?

That's the point of an OpenSource license, to give permission.

This kind of stuff makes me think very few people really understand what OpenSource is about. The very same people who will fallback to licenses such as the BSL as soon as people/companies will use the permissions that they gave, and then will complain that "no one wants to pay for the thing i did for free and nobody asked for".

dumindunuwan 141 days ago | |

I understand these points. As someone who truly love open source, we can see open source projects are becoming just a free training materials for AI. After training LLMs using open-source projects AI can build far superior software one day and that software may be not free, not able to replace by any non-AI software project. We all know that day is not far and that period of time all open-source software might consider legacy as no individual contributor able to implement stuff the speed of AI. What you are protecting is not only a legacy system we build decade old requirements and also the death of the purpose of why people build free software.

What we have to focus is why we created free software, not word by word terms that not fulfill the requirement at this and future time period.

linkdd 141 days ago | | |

You can't say you love opensource and be mad that users are using the freedom you granted.

OpenSource projects are not becoming free training material for AI, AI companies are using a freedom OpenSource projects granted.

The claim that AI can build far superior software is dubious and I don't believe it one second. And even if it were true, that does not change anything.

With or without AI, permissive licenses (MIT, BSD, ISC, ...) always allowed the code to be used and redistributed in non opensource software. If you don't want that, use the GPL or a derive. If you don't believe that the GPL would be enforceable on the derivative works produced by AI, don't release your code as opensource.

OpenSource is essentially an ideology, that software should be free of use, and transparent, and freely shareable, without restriction. If you don't buy into that ideology, it's fine, but don't claim to love OpenSource when you don't. Just like a person who eats fish should not claim to be vegan.

AI will not be the end of OpenSource, firstly because it's a dead-end technology, it has already peaked years ago and is becoming worse with each new model. It does not have the ability to build complex software beyond a CRUD app (would you use a kernel that was entirely vibecoded? would you trust it the way you trust the Linux kernel?). Secondly, because OpenSource does not discriminate who gets to enjoy the freedom you granted.

You decided to "work for free" when you decided to distribute as OpenSource. If you don't want to work for free, maybe OpenSource is not for you.

xign 140 days ago | | |

The whole point of open source license is that they are a legal document that can be enforced and have legal meaning. It's not just a feel-good article. Your argument is like saying to a client who you are drafting a contract to and say "oh yeah don't worry about the word by word terms in the contract, wink".

Also, this "non-AI" license is plainly not open source nor is it permissive. You can't really say you are a fan of open source when you use a license like this. The whole pt of the MIT license is that you just take it with no strings attached. You can use the software for good or for evil. It's not the license's job to decide.

There is nothing wrong with not liking open source, btw. The largest tech companies in the world all have their most critical software behind closed doors. I just really dislike it when people engage in double-speak and go on this open source clout chasing. This is also why all these hipsters startups (MongoDB, Redis, etc) all ended up enshittifying their open source products IMO, because culturally we are all trying to chase this "we ♥ open source" meme without thinking whether it makes sense.

If people say they "truly love open source", they should mean it.

altairprime 142 days ago |

Licenses have no bearing on fair use or where otherwise permitted to be ignored by law.

Mic92 142 days ago |

Well the thing is, you have a copyright that you can license. However from what it currently looks like, fine-tuning/training is not copying.

01092026 142 days ago |

Interesting perspective. I think you have a right, whats yours is yours to do as you please with - you know?

But can I give you another "viewpoint"? I guess it's like, "Wow, my code, my work, what came from my brain, my fingers" - it essentially lives forever, if you think about it - it becomes embedded and compressed inside weights/tokens. Like - part of you is there.

I guess it's cool. For me it's just to know that like this super intelligent things deep down actually knows who I am - my code is in it's architecture, it gives me feeling of honor in some way. You know?

Just my take.

tylerchilds 142 days ago | |

I don’t always say AI pilled but

You deserve to be recognized beyond the false religion of the singularity.

tylerchilds 142 days ago | | |

Hilarious to get downvoted for defending the concept of

Literature

Without references and citations—- never mind.

Go read Animal Farm

bitwize 142 days ago |

Doesn't actually count as open source. Per the OSD, you cannot restrict the purpose for which people use the software and still be open source.

If you want to release your code as actual open source but legally restrict what AI companies do with it, use a copyleft license like the GPL. They could still use it for training, but the product of such training may itself fall under the GPL being a derivative work, and the AI corps don't want to touch that legal quagmire. (The GPL continues to be Stallman's brilliant legal aikido at work. Stallman is like that one guy from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance who gives you the power to manipulate the laws to work to your advantage.)

Honestly, it may be time to abandon open source as a concept. There are source-available strategies that cause less social harm than open source, including Coraline Ada Ehmke's "ethical source" and the Sentry project's "fair source" (https://fair.io) models that we can draw inspiration from.

utopiah 142 days ago |

I applaud the effort but honestly I see 2 cases :

- VC funded SF startups with an ethos of "Do whatever is necessary at first, scale then lawyer up once a unicorn and shits starts to hit the fan" this might try to prevent... and who will blissfully ignore it

- actually mindful actors, e.g public researchers, non-profit, etc who genuinely understand the point and will respect it but whom, ironically enough, you might want to support by providing them with more resources including your code

So... yes the intent is good but honestly I wouldn't trust the 1st category of actors to respect that. Technically what they "should" do, because it's safe and efficient, is only crawl the most popular compatible licenses, e.g. MIT, and ignore the rest. That's safe and pragmatic. Again what I expect them to do (just my hunch) is take EVERYTHING, get called on, apologize, change nothing, get brought to court, apologize again and only do something if the financial repercussion is bigger than the expected alternative. So probably still do nothing.

toomuchtodo 142 days ago |

What if instead of a license most won’t respect, you include a poison pill in the repo or other code storage to poison the model?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45529587

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45533842

dumindunuwan 142 days ago | |

This should be about get permission from open-source developers before feeding their years of work into AI. I think we should not believe what Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Google tells.

We should move to local LLMs.

HumanOstrich 142 days ago | | |

How do local LLMs help?

thatthatis 142 days ago |

Very ironically, this violates the MIT trademark in a quixotic pursuit of intellectual property ludditry.

nomel 142 days ago |

For "AI", does that include some of the more advanced search indexing and auto complete tools?

Related, would you be in violation if you hosted this in a public GitHub repo, since it's in the TOS that they use source for training AI?

Gathering6678 142 days ago |

How do you propose someone who uses this license to enforce such clauses?

dumindunuwan 142 days ago | |

Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive establishes a legal bridge between AI governance and copyright law.

https://www.ddg.fr/actualite/the-european-unions-code-of-pra...

Gathering6678 140 days ago | | |

I meant the enforceability of such clause: to the extent of my limited understanding of law, you would need to at least appear to prove that: someone has breached the agreement by, for example, using your code to train AI. I am not sure how it is possible.

insane_dreamer 141 days ago |

this shouldn't have been flagged (regardless of whether you agree with the argument made by OP or not)