Why we need to dive deeper into AI

I understand the anger against Copilot. For 35+ years, Open Source developers have made their source code publicly available for the progress of computer science and humanity. Now that code is being used to train an artificial intelligence that creates more code –something the original developers never envisioned nor intended. And Copilot itself cannot be studied, modified, or redistributed freely either. I can see how it’s infuriating for some.

Discussing if Copilot has an Open Source license issue or a copyright issue means getting lost in legal weeds and missing the point. To me the issue with Copilot is fairness. But it’s not just GitHub.

Copilot has exposed developers to one of the quandaries of modern AI: the unbalance of rights between people publishing materials on the internet and the corporations using “user-generated content” to train an almighty AI.

For years we knew that uploading our pictures, blog posts and code on public sites meant we’d be losing some amount of control over our creations. Thus, we created community norms and Open Source & Content licenses to balance control and publicity between creators and society as a whole.

That balance is broken now. The Creative Commons and Open Source licenses work on the assumptions that software is software and data is data. But for AI, data is not just data: it’s also input to a model that can create more software or decide your credit worthiness or decide how long you stay in prison and much more.

Anything you and I have put online, decades worth of forum posts, pictures, code, documentation, wiki pages can be used to build AIs and we have no frameworks to prevent that. Nor do we as a society have a way to get a fair share of benefits from these AIs.

We should turn the anger at GitHub into fixing the core issue. Moving code to another online host won’t fix anything. We can’t simply rely on the “goodwill” and “good faith” of corporations. We’re overdue for a broader conversation about AI’s impact on society and on Open Source.

OSI has been working for several months on building a virtual event called Deep Dive: AI to engage our community in conversation about the legal and ethical implications of AI and what’s acceptable for AI systems to be “Open Source.” We’ll start releasing the podcasts in a few weeks. Stay tuned.

Stefano Maffulli
Executive Director, OSI

In this month’s Open Source Initiative newsletter:

Why OSI? Featured sponsor, Open Weaver

Last month we recognized the maintainers and their contributions during maintainers month. Maintainers get yelled at for free and by complete strangers. It’s a tough role. We know that feeling of being criticized by the general public. After all, the Open Source Initiative maintains the Open Source Definition and the Open Standards Requirements for the wider community, we get it.

We want to recognize the work done to improve the projects we use every day by giving them a shout out.

Open Weaver is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startup developing software that uses artificial intelligence to help developers build world-class applications easier and faster through reusing millions of open source libraries.

We asked Open Weaver to share the organization’s intrinsic ties to Open Source, its reasons for supporting the Open Source Initiative, and its hopes for the Open Source movement. Here’s what they said.

The OSI celebrates maintainer month

Last month we recognized the maintainers and their contributions during maintainers month. Maintainers get yelled at for free and by complete strangers. It’s a tough role. We know that feeling of being criticized by the general public. After all, the Open Source Initiative maintains the Open Source Definition and the Open Standards Requirements for the wider community, we get it.

We want to recognize the work done to improve the projects we use every day by giving them a shout out here.

Higher Ed needs to step up to stay relevant as Open Source floods the IT world

82% of enterprise IT leaders are choosing to work with Open Source vendors, and higher education is stepping up and following suit. In order to stay competitive, campuses must take a critical look at how they manage IT portfolios and seriously consider a larger commitment to their own Open Source strategy.

Read more in this blog post from OSI Affiliate Apereo Foundation’s General Manager, Patrick Masson.

The year of change for the Open Source Initiative

Last month we released our 2021 end of year report. The year 2021 marked the beginning of new ways to allow the organization to achieve its mission. New structure, new staff, new ways of being the stewards of the Open Source Definition. Despite the transformations that were happening within, we never slowed down. Read more here.

OSI at the OSSummit North America

OSI Executive Director Stefano Maffulli attended last month’s OSSummit North America event in Austin – his first large in person event representing the OSI. Thank you to all who stopped by and said hello. We had a great time meeting so many of you – we even ran out of stickers! We’ll be back with more at #Scale19x – hope to see you there!

What does AI have in common with Open Source?

OSI Executive Director, Stefano Maffulli, sat down with Richard Littauer and Justin Dorfman hosts of the podcast series Sustain and had an interesting conversation about our upcoming Deep Dive: AI event and what AI has in common with Open Source. Read more about the interview here.

Helping Open Source projects thrive by putting essential licensing data at teams’ fingertips

Created in 2018, ClearlyDefined is a crowdsourced project created by Microsoft in partnership with the Open Source Initiative. The project has seen a lot of growth since its inception, and thus we’d like to reintroduce ClearlyDefined to the OSI community. ClearlyDefined currently houses 17,746,961 definitions. That’s double what it housed last year. Having just undergone a UI redesign, data is displayed in a more user-friendly way, making it easier to understand and consume. Read more about this project here.

The future of innovation has patent-free standards

It may come as a surprise to find that some supposedly “open“ standards – including those ratified by standards development organizations (SDOs) – can’t be implemented without going cap-in-hand to the world’s largest companies to buy a license. It’s the result of a legacy approach to innovation from the days when it was only really about hardware. Read why we need patent-free standards.

OSI in the news

In case you missed it, the OSI was featured in this article:

And a huge shoutout to all of our new sponsors

  • Atlantic.net – new Community Sponsor
  • Scarf – new Partner Sponsor
  • LTTR (Look to the Right) – returning Partner Sponsor
  • Command Prompt – new Partner Sponsor
  • Comcast – for their continued support

Are you interested in sponsoring or partnering with the OSI? Please see our Sponsorship Prospectus. Contact us to find out more about how your organization can promote open source development, communities and software.