this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
139 points (97.3% liked)

Open Source

30301 readers
639 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (4 children)

So the cover art I made for a friend's album isn't open source, even though I released it as CC BY-SA... because you can't make it yourself?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I would consider the "source code" for artwork to be the project file, with all of the layers intact and whatnot. The Photoshop PSD, the GIMP XCF or the Krita KRA. The "compiled" version would be the exported PNG/JPG.

You can license a compiled binary under CC BY if you want. That would allow users to freely decompile/disassemble it or to bundle the binary for their purposes, but it's different from releasing source code. It's closed source, but under a free license.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It would depend on the format what is counted as source, and what isn't.

You can create a picture by hand, using no input data.

I challenge you to do the same for model weights. If you truly just sit down and type away numbers in a file, then yes, the model would have no further source. But that is not something that can be done in practice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I challenge you to recreate the Mona Lisa.

My point is that these models are so complex that they're closer to art than anything reproduce

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I don't see your point? What is the "source" for Mona Lisa I would use? For LLMs I could reproduce them given the original inputs.

Creating those inputs may be an art, but so could any piece of code. No one claims that code being elegant disqualifies it from being open source.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Are you sure that you can reproduce the model, given the same inputs? Reproducibility is a difficult property to achieve. I wouldn't think LLMs are reproduce.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

In theory, if you have the inputs, you have reproducible outputs, modulo perhaps some small deviations due to non-deterministic parallelism. But if those effects are large enough to make your model perform differently you already have big issues, no different than if a piece of software performs differently each time it is compiled.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

That's the theory for some paradigms that were specifically designed to have the property of determinism.

Most things in the world, even computers, are non-deterministic

Nondeterminism isn't necessarily a bad thing for systems like AI.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I think technically, the source should be the native format of whatever image manipulation program that you use. For vector graphics, there is svg format but the native editor is still preferable. Otherwise, whoever gets the end copy cannot easily modify or reproduce it, only copy it. But it of course depends on the definition of "easy" and a lot of other factors. Licensing is hard and it is because I am not a lawyer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

you released it under a non open source license. So very clearly: no it is not

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Wut. That license is literally compatible with the GPL

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

CC BY-SA is considered open source. CC BY-NC is not.