Developers at the cutting edge are adopting licenses with use rules. Knowledge that’s “a thing”, and conviction it can be a good thing, were al

Open RAIL-M Is More Unclear Than Scary — /dev/lawyer

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2023-01-27 05:30:06

Developers at the cutting edge are adopting licenses with use rules. Knowledge that’s “a thing”, and conviction it can be a good thing, were alive and mentally available for them.

Open licensing history repeats again. The GNU General Public License became “general” when they made a reusable form from GCC-, Emacs-, or other project-specific licenses. The RAILs are going there.

The particular language of Open RAIL-M leaves me wondering how much of the point was expressing ethical concern as opposed to really going after unethical uses. Omissions in the terms could just be quirks of implementation. But there’s definitely more that could have been done in the terms.

Use-based restrictions as referenced in paragraph 5 MUST be included as an enforceable provision by You in any type of legal agreement (e.g. a license) governing the use and/or distribution of the Model or Derivatives of the Model…

I could read it to mean just enforceable by You, meaning enforceable by whoever’s receiving the license. Not necessarily by contributors upstream. Not necessarily by people harmed by misuses.