This is a helpful counterpoint. From big tech companies’ perspective, I think that GPL (and especially aGPL) is close to the worst case scenario, since it destroys the ability to have proprietary software and can pose an existential risk to the company by empowering their competitors. Most of the specific clauses we discuss are not nearly so dangerous—they at most impose some small overhead on using or releasing the code. Corrigibility is the only clause that I can see being comparably dangerous: depending on the mechanism used to create future versions of the license, companies may feel they are giving too much control over their future to a third party.
I think I generalised too quickly in my comment; I saw “virality” and “any later version” and assumed the worst. But of course we can take into account AGPL backfiring when we design this licence!
One nice side effect of even a toothless AI Safety Licence: it puts a reminder about safety into the top of every repo. Sure, no one reads licences (and people often ignore health and safety rules when it gets in their way, even at their own risk). But maybe it makes things a bit more tangible like LICENSE.md gives law a foothold into the minds of devs.
This is a helpful counterpoint. From big tech companies’ perspective, I think that GPL (and especially aGPL) is close to the worst case scenario, since it destroys the ability to have proprietary software and can pose an existential risk to the company by empowering their competitors. Most of the specific clauses we discuss are not nearly so dangerous—they at most impose some small overhead on using or releasing the code. Corrigibility is the only clause that I can see being comparably dangerous: depending on the mechanism used to create future versions of the license, companies may feel they are giving too much control over their future to a third party.
I think I generalised too quickly in my comment; I saw “virality” and “any later version” and assumed the worst. But of course we can take into account AGPL backfiring when we design this licence!
One nice side effect of even a toothless AI Safety Licence: it puts a reminder about safety into the top of every repo. Sure, no one reads licences (and people often ignore health and safety rules when it gets in their way, even at their own risk). But maybe it makes things a bit more tangible like LICENSE.md gives law a foothold into the minds of devs.