Re: Concerns/questions around Software Heritage Archive

[Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv>]

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

> 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.
>

It doesn’t clarify them, but it does illustrate them.

HuggingFace and the StarCoder2 model is in violation of principle 
2.  By their own admission, they are including code without clear 
licensing[1]:

    The main difference between the Stack v2 and the Stack v1 is 
    that we
    include both permissively licensed and unlicensed files.

HuggingFace’s StarChat2 Playground[2] also violates this 
principle, as it outputs code without any license or provenance 
information; I know, because I tried it.  While their own terms of 
use for StarCoder2 state:

    Any use of all or part of the code gathered in The Stack v2 
    must abide by
    the terms of the original licenses...

...their own playground makes this impossible.

HuggingFace is also in violation of the third principle, because 
they haven’t established a functioning opt-out model[3].  Opting 
out requires using non-free software; requests have been sitting 
for nearly a year with no action or response; and out of every 
request submitted, only a single one has *ever* been honored.

They appear to be violating free software licenses on large scale. 
They are in violation of SWH’s own positions.


> 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”. :-)
>

I am crystal clear on the meaning of free software.  I wish to 
remove it from these models *in order to* keep it free.

Thanks,

  — Ian

[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