[gdal-dev] Proposed RFC 8 amendment regarding (prohibited use of) generative AI tools

[ElPaso]

Il 07/10/24 18:38, Even Rouault via gdal-dev ha scritto:
> Hi,
>
> I propose we update RFC 8 with the following changes: 
> https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/pull/10958
>
> Can we enforce that? No (similarly we can't prevent someone from 
> stealing copyrighted material from source code of proprietary software 
> they have access to, or "re-license" or "forget" copyright attribution 
> of open source code without authorization), but at least we set the 
> policy.
>
> This is admittedly a highly controversial topic. Debian for example 
> has had related discussions but didn't come with a position for now, 
> whereas Gentoo banned use of generative AI: 
> https://lwn.net/Articles/972331/
>
> It seems more prudent to me to ban for now, and potentially relax in 
> the future, when/if the legal status of this becomes clearer. (not 
> even mentioning the ethical or environmental impact sides of such tools)
>
> Even
>

Hi Even,


I have read the discussion on lwn and I must say that I am more in line 
with the debian position.


I find it ironic that as an open source developer who probably 
contributed a lot of training material to feed the AI model I myself am 
banned to use it.


At the moment I am using copilot as a cut-and-paste on steroids and it 
has improved my efficiency, to me it is no different than copying and 
pasting from another file in the GDAL source code or going to SO to 
search how to write a complex recursive lambda implementation in C++11, 
cut the example and paste in GDAL. Note that in both cases the 
copied/pasted or generated code will need careful review and adaptations.


-- 
Alessandro Pasotti
w3: www.itopen.it