Re: Concerns/questions around Software Heritage Archive

[Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv>]

Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> On lun., 18 mars 2024 at 12:38, Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv> 
> wrote:
>
>> They appear to be violating free software licenses on large 
>> scale. 
>> They are in violation of SWH’s own positions.
>
> [...]
>
>> [1]: https://arxiv.org/html/2402.19173v1
>> [2]: 
>> https://huggingface.co/spaces/HuggingFaceH4/starchat2-playground
>> [3]: https://huggingface.co/datasets/bigcode/the-stack-v2
>> [4]: https://github.com/bigcode-project/opt-out-v2/issues
>
> Please note that Software Heritage folks are not co-author of 
> all that;
> or I misread.  Do not take me wrong, this is not an attempt to 
> escape
> but a query for waiting the feedback of SWH.
>

Shit rolls downhill.  It’s the least surprising thing in the world 
to find that an "AI" company is violating licenses, because the 
entire technology is based on infringement at a massive scale. 
SWH’s partnership with, and promotion of, both the company and its 
license-violating model, in violation of their *own stated 
principles*, raises very legitimate questions.

There are multpile overlapping concerns here; personal, 
organizational, legal, ethical, and technical.

From a personal, legal standpoint, HuggingFace is almost certainly 
in violation of my code’s licenses.  I will, therefore, work to 
remove my code from their models.  From a personal, ethical 
standpoint, I believe that SWH has proven themselves untrustworthy 
by enabling *and promoting* this infringement in violation of 
their own stated policies, and will work to remove my code from 
their archive.  Personally, I cannot extend them the benefit of 
the doubt on this.  They blew it.

From an organizational ethical standpoint, Guix is IMO on the 
right track by waiting on SWH (and perhaps pressuring them to fix 
things).  From an organizational, technical perspective, I would 
like to see concrete measures to support my (and hundreds of 
others’) personal, ethical desires to exclude software from SWH, 
and by extension, HuggingFace’s models.


> As Ludo said, SWH folks are, by the way, also long time Free 
> Software
> activists.
>

In my view, this is not to their credit.  I’d expect people 
familiar with Free Software to be *more* sensitive to licensing 
concerns, thus less likely to partner with a company likely to 
violate them.


> PS: Thanks for the detailed explanations.  I will provide my 
> reading
> later, after some concerns will be separated, eventually.

You’re very welcome.

Thanks,

  — Ian