Timeline for Our Partnership with OpenAI
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
25 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 28 at 17:24 | comment | added | GothAlice | "irrevocable" is non-enforceable in a number of locales. There's also the concept that having been given a (CC) license, a demonstrable lack of enforcement of the license (e.g. by permitting and encouraging unattributed use of the protected material) also opens up a pathway to dissolution of the agreement. Part of why my own record label had to copyright strike me, the creator of my own works. To prove they were doing what I pay them to do: enforce my copyrights. | |
| May 15 at 6:17 | history | bounty ended | reneMod | ||
| May 14 at 23:18 | comment | added | 0-One-0 | Such as this: law.stackexchange.com/q/91785 I'm more concerned with how attribution would be implemented, and what separates content, training set, model and output. And quite a few other things actually, such as the impact of no human being involved in a process and how does the cc by SA license deal with or is construed under such circumstances. People should ask further questions on Law.SE and there is also the very last answer here which shows a commitment to attribution. Once again I blame the business for not taking care to elaborate on these. | |
| May 14 at 23:12 | comment | added | 0-One-0 | To me, the idea that the ToS is deceiving or that a court case is needed to assess what this means is unreasonable and borderline paranoia; legal construction of the ToS is not something extremely complicated. Content is contributed under cc by SA and this allows for commercial use. Terms are construed so as to give effect to clauses, not void them mutually and make one moot and the latter clause is a mere technical exception to the former. What appears at the bottom right of every page is that contributions are under cc by SA. The issue is much more complicated for different reasons... | |
| May 14 at 20:01 | comment | added | Travis J | No, "Stack Exchange Inc can do whatever they want with Q&A data.", they cannot. That only applies to relevantly licensed material, of which not 100% of the exchange is covered. Changing the current license does not change the terms that applied to previous content, only the relevant license at the time would apply. For example, they couldn't change their definitions right now to entirely remove licensing and have that apply to the entirety of content produced by the user base. | |
| May 14 at 18:37 | comment | added | Remember Monica | If this interpretation is correct (and I don't doubt it either flatly is, or can easily be so interpreted by lawyers), then first stating CC-BY-SA as license and later different terms (which completely invalidate the earlier license) is incredibly deceiving. The only way to interpret that is that this is a deliberate attempt at deceiving people about the real license. | |
| May 13 at 1:22 | comment | added | AMtwo | @ninja米étoilé I think that your interpretation varies quite a bit from the opinion of the Stack Overflow lawyers. Unless someone decides to use their lawyers to challenge the opinion of Stack's lawyers, the Company's path forward will likely follow their lawyers' interpretation. | |
| May 12 at 23:47 | comment | added | 0-One-0 | The business is not in a privileged position with regards to the content, except for these maintenance/analytics/regulatory items listed or others which might reasonably be construed as related, otherwise this would make the grant under cc by SA moot. The "commercially exploit" language is no big deal, as the non-NC licences allow for commercial use already. Commercial use is possible, but what is not possible is to create a derivative work from the content where the cc by SA licence would have been purged. Anything this partnership creates which incorporates the content is under this licence. | |
| May 12 at 22:46 | comment | added | endolith | Claude Opus: 'While the Terms of Service (ToS) could be interpreted as implying a dual licensing scheme, with content being licensed under both the CC BY-SA 4.0 and a separate commercial license, this interpretation is based on the ambiguous "commercially exploit" clause and is not explicitly stated in the ToS. … If Stack Overflow sells the content to AI companies without ensuring that they provide attribution and release their LLMs under an open-source license, it would undermine the principles of openness and attribution that are central to the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.' | |
| May 12 at 22:46 | comment | added | endolith |
gpt-4-turbo, given the current ToS: "It’s also important to note that although Stack Overflow has the right to exploit the content commercially, this must still align with the constraints of the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. This includes the stipulation that anyone who uses the content — including Stack Overflow if they are providing your content to third parties — must also distribute it under the same CC license, thus preventing any exclusive commercial rights or non-CC licensing to other companies without additional permission."
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| May 12 at 20:30 | comment | added | 0-One-0 | I disagree with your analysis of the licence granted. The core grant is under cc by SA. You fail to quote "as reasonably necessary to, for example" and therefore your summary of this is inadequate as well as the conclusions you draw from this. The scope of this is not "however they want". I cannot reply but I request any use of the content from the network comply with the full terms of the cc by SA licence, including full attribution by name with link to the post AND the full continuation of the licence in the training set and output based on this content, as per the terms of the licence. | |
| May 12 at 16:40 | comment | added | Minh-Long Luu |
Yesterday's promises are not guaranteed to be tomorrow's promises yeah, look at Reddit last year.
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| May 11 at 18:13 | comment | added | starball | @endolith When did Stack Exchange start to dual-license user content? | |
| May 11 at 17:43 | comment | added | endolith | @AMtwo When did it become dual-licensed? | |
| May 10 at 22:37 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| May 11 at 3:01 | |||||
| May 10 at 21:49 | comment | added | AMtwo | @BenVoigt that might be your reading of it, but I assure you that Stank Overflow considers the data "dual licensed" and that they have an irrevocable right as described in my post. I say this as a former staff member. | |
| May 10 at 15:39 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | @super-starball-ultra: That's definitely a reference to the permission under CC BY-SA, which is conditional. It's not granting a new permission to have derivative rights, so it has to be a reference to a permission granted elsewhere. Also note that we're not talking about the author taking action to revoke permission, but StackOverflow losing the permission by their own action. The author would only be reminding StackOverflow about the loss which has already taken place. | |
| May 10 at 7:39 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | Related Can SE just resell our data, relicense it and remove the attribution requirement? | |
| May 10 at 4:20 | comment | added | starball | @BenVoigt I'm not certain of that. see also "you cannot revoke permission for Stack Overflow to publish, distribute, store and use such content and to allow others to have derivative rights to publish, distribute, store and use such content" which is (also) vague. | |
| May 9 at 22:01 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | And even if you argue that it does create a second license, relicensing is not one of the rights granted, so that supposed second license cannot be used for any partnership, OpenAI or otherwise. | |
| May 9 at 21:57 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | Legally, Stack Overflow has to abide by CC BY-SA. The answer quoted that. The other paragraph doesn't create a new license, it's just restating rights granted under CC BY-SA. Note that "irrevocable" does not mean "unconditional". | |
| May 9 at 18:04 | comment | added | Josiah Yoder | I understand that legally, Stack Overflow can do whatever they want with the data. But practically, to maintain some level of community trust, the company DOES need to maintain an attitude of keeping promises such as "Attribution is non-negotiable". | |
| May 8 at 12:58 | comment | added | AMtwo | @MadScientist If I've learned one thing in recent years, it's that yesterday's promises are not guaranteed to be tomorrow's promises. Data Dump was free forever, then the ceo unilaterally decided to shut it off, then they pretended it was just temporary and turned it back on when everyone was upset.... And how many times have they "forgotten" to keep Mods in the loop on changes? | |
| May 7 at 21:13 | comment | added | Mad Scientist | On the last collaboration SE explicitly stated that they are not provided the content under a different, non-CC license when I asked about that. I assumed this case would be the same, but it certainly would be useful to ask it explicitly for this case as well. | |
| May 7 at 19:39 | history | answered | AMtwo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |