> If someone takes your open source code and incorporates it into their proprietary software, then they are effectively using your work for their private gain.
And then if we can close that loop by taking their proprietary software and feeding it into a NN to re-liberate it isn't that a net win for software freedom?
Today crossing the sourcecode->bytecode veil effectively obfuscates the implementation beyond most human's ability to modify the software. Humans work best in sourcecode. Nothing saying our AI overlords won't be able to work well in bytecode or take it in the other direction.
I guess what I'm saying is, today a compiler is a one-way door for software freedom. Once it goes through the compiler, we lose a lot of freedom without a massive human investment or the original source code. Maybe that door is about to become a two way door with copyright law supporting moving back and forth through that door?
I can’t tell if you disagree with the rest of my comment or didn’t bother to read it…
That’s literally not the definition of proprietary.
You download proprietary software when you navigate to (nearly) every webpage. Just because a website like HN sends you (possibly unobfuscated) HTML, CSS, and JS over the wire in plain-text does not mean those files are not proprietary. Those files are covered by copyright in the U.S.
Access to the source code is not sufficient for that source code to be FOSS.
You also failed to acknowledge leaked source code and bytecode decompilation, which were a substantial portion of my comment.
The definition gets a bit blurry around software, just like the definition of "ownership" does.
Colloquially, "proprietary software" means closed-source. You can definitely put it in context where it means "copyright without license"; but outside that context, the colloquial meaning is enough.
And then if we can close that loop by taking their proprietary software and feeding it into a NN to re-liberate it isn't that a net win for software freedom?
Today crossing the sourcecode->bytecode veil effectively obfuscates the implementation beyond most human's ability to modify the software. Humans work best in sourcecode. Nothing saying our AI overlords won't be able to work well in bytecode or take it in the other direction.
I guess what I'm saying is, today a compiler is a one-way door for software freedom. Once it goes through the compiler, we lose a lot of freedom without a massive human investment or the original source code. Maybe that door is about to become a two way door with copyright law supporting moving back and forth through that door?