I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains.

[petealexharris@mastodon.scot]

I think the appearance of free software really broke the oligarch's brains. People are just giving away stuff that should be Shareholder Value? And we *can't* buy it off them and own it? People are just running a compiler whenever they like to make whatever they want without paying anyone?

The push to adopt LLM-powered code generation tools is so frenzied and desperate partly because it's a perceived solution to claw back ownership of the means of production into the Right Hands.

[hajovonta@mastodon.online]

@petealexharris psst, I tell you a secret: we can make free software even with LLMs :)

[petealexharris@mastodon.scot]

@hajovonta
That's not a secret, also not the point.

The 2 main things about free software that offend capital are:
1. Capital can't appropriate it easily and enclose the commons because of capital's own copyright laws
2. Individual human skill can't be owned by a company: it's a rare form of workers owning the means of production

LLMs attack this by:
1. selectively ignoring copyright with the blessing of the powerful
2. eroding the value of human skill to rebalance power in capital's favour

[adriano@lile.cl]

@petealexharris Eh. Given the amount of times I've seen "X project used the world over by every multinational ever is badly maintained by like one dude in Nebrahoma because nobody pays for it", I'm not sure about your base argument.

[petealexharris@mastodon.scot]

@adriano
My base argument is political. None of the corporations promising to spend literal hundreds of billions of dollars on "AI" are doing it to make tools for users to be more productive for the benefit of those users themselves. And they are essentially stealing the combined informational output of humanity to make a land grab on that productivity. If it pays off, it pays off in unthinkable wealth. Guess how I think they intend that wealth to be distributed.

[adriano@lile.cl]

@petealexharris I understand your argument, but corpos have managed to coopt and abuse and parasite libre software for decades now, just by using it without paying and without giving back. They didn't need LLMs for that.

[petealexharris@mastodon.scot]

@adriano
Using it is OK. When they got caught violating copyright, which wasn't always I'll grant you, it was uncomfortable for them.

With LLMs trained on huge swathes of copyrighted works without scrutiny or attribution they can do it at unprecedented scale, and with regulatory capture letting them do it, they have essentially already carried out the heist.

The only question now is whether they can fence the stolen goods and for how much.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@petealexharris @adriano throw into the mix also the whole «supply chain» bullshit that they tried to push with questionable success through their propaganda machines (sorry, “major tech journals”). Now they're trying to get control of it by making *themselves* an essential part of the supply chain of FLOSS development through their LLM control.