i understand the sentiment, but the nature of FOSS is that i can't really prevent anyone from using it. i'd have to police it, and that would just lead to more misery.
i too contributed to stackoverflow and eventually stopped because it didn't feel worth the effort. i never asked a question though, so i didn't have the experience GP made, but i doubt i would want to delete everything, at least not without moving all my answers to another location.
once or twice when searching for the solution to a specific problem i was lead to a stackoverflow question and had to discover that the answer that solved my problem was my own from a decade earlier. so i too benefit from posting answers. deleting them would reduce that benefit.
> the nature of FOSS is that i can't really prevent anyone from using it
That's my point - maybe FOSS isn't the absolute good we've been lead to believe.
It was a response to locked down proprietary software which increasingly became hostile to its users. And it is (from a user's perspective) better that that for sure. But from a dev perspective, it's not as good as it could be.
> my answers
Exactly, those are your answers, your work. We've spent a lot of our limited time working for other people's benefit because we believed in it or sometimes because it was fun. But ultimately, it's becoming clear other people don't care and will throw us under the bus as soon as we're no longer useful. And then there's people who are just looking for a way to take advantage of us.
And I want to exclude both from benefiting from my work.
We should strive to find methods to make good, productive, pro-social people to benefit while keeping anyone who wants to exploit us away.
Getting free stuff is good for the user of the stuff, yes. Giving away stuff for free might not feel good if you don't like the people you're giving the stuff away to, yes.
People aren't "taking advantage" of you by benefiting from the free work that you voluntarily do. They may be rude towards you, but it's your choice to work for them or not.
If you release your work to the world, there's no license agreement in existence that will prevent "undesirables" from benefiting from your work. See: all of the AIs being trained on publicly accessible code (regardless of its license).
The answer is just, do write open source code if you think it's fun, and you're okay with the worst people you can imagine using your code. If you write a geodata library, it might be used in a targeting module for a bomb, which might in turn be launched towards civilians. That's just a consequence you'll have to accept.
Surely you have to understand that you own a plot of land, a house, the number in your bank account or the clothes on your back only to the extent that somebody is willing to perform violence on those who want to use "your property" for themselves. That might be you yourself but you can't be everywhere at once and you can't be awake all the time either. That protection comes from mutual agreement of people to defend each other's properties, usually through some institution such as the police/army/state.
Why should intellectual property be any different?
Why should I not be able to make an agreement with people like me that we only allow certain people to use our work under certain conditions and if any one of us violates the agreement (or an outsider decides to ignore it) we use violence to stop and punish that use?
> the people you're giving the stuff away to
Not giving it to them, they are taking it. I am making it available with instructions who can use it and how. Some people take it, following those instructions, some take it ignoring them. Would you use the word "give" if it was about leaked source code? What about leaked nudes of your girlfriend or daughter?
> See: all of the AIs being trained on publicly accessible code (regardless of its license).
That's a circular argument.
LLM companies claim what they're doing is legal. At best they're using a loophole - statistical interpolating autocompleters did not exist when copyright law was being written, I doubt many people could conceive of them at that time. At worst they are actively and knowingly violating the law, not to mention consent, of the best most altruistic people in the world to exploit them and bring about a new era of inequality and oppression.
Anyway, just because somebody gets away with something does not make it legal and certainly does not make it right.
> That's just a consequence you'll have to accept.
Or I can build both social and technical means to control the usage. Nothing is perfect but then if you want perfect, why do you lock your car or home?
i too contributed to stackoverflow and eventually stopped because it didn't feel worth the effort. i never asked a question though, so i didn't have the experience GP made, but i doubt i would want to delete everything, at least not without moving all my answers to another location.
once or twice when searching for the solution to a specific problem i was lead to a stackoverflow question and had to discover that the answer that solved my problem was my own from a decade earlier. so i too benefit from posting answers. deleting them would reduce that benefit.