Re: Concerns/questions around Software Heritage Archive

[Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On sam., 16 mars 2024 at 08:52, Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv> wrote:

> They appear to be using the archive to build LLMs: 
> https://www.softwareheritage.org/2024/02/28/responsible-ai-with-starcoder2/

About LLM, Software Heritage made a clear statement:

    https://www.softwareheritage.org/2023/10/19/swh-statement-on-llm-for-code

Quoting:

        We feel that the question is no longer whether LLMs for code
        should be built. They are already being built, independently of
        what we do, and there is no turning back.  The real question is
        how they should be built and whom they should benefit.

Principles:

        1. Knowledge derived from the Software Heritage archive must be
        given back to humanity, rather than monopolized for private
        gain. The resulting machine learning models must be made available
        under a suitable open license, together with the documentation and
        toolings needed to use them.

        2. The initial training data extracted from the Software Heritage
        archive must be fully and precisely identified by, for example,
        publishing the corresponding SWHID identifiers (note that, in the
        context of Software Heritage, public availability of the initial
        training data is a given: anyone can obtain it from the
        archive). This will enable use cases such as: studying biases
        (fairness), verifying if a code of interest was present in the
        training data (transparency), and providing appropriate attribution
        when generated code bears resemblance to training data (credit),
        among others.

        3. Mechanisms should be established, where possible, for authors to
        exclude their archived code from the training inputs before model
        training begins.

I hope it clarifies your concerns to some extent.


Moreover, you wrote: « I want absolutely nothing to do with them. »

Maybe there is a misunderstanding on your side about what “free
software” and GPL means because once “free software”, you cannot prevent
people to use “your” free software for any purposes you dislike.

If you want to bound the use cases of the software you create, you need
to explicitly specify that in the license.  And if you do, your software
will not be considered as “free software”.

That’s the double sword of “free software”. :-)

Cheers,
simon