On the modification and revocation of open source licences

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gagnon, Paul, Benjamin, Misha, Gauthier, Justine, Regis, Catherine, Lee, Jenny, Nordell-Markovits, Alexei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Gagnon, Paul
Benjamin, Misha
Gauthier, Justine
Regis, Catherine
Lee, Jenny
Nordell-Markovits, Alexei
author_facet Gagnon, Paul
Benjamin, Misha
Gauthier, Justine
Regis, Catherine
Lee, Jenny
Nordell-Markovits, Alexei
contents Historically, open source commitments have been deemed irrevocable once materials are released under open source licenses. In this paper, the authors argue for the creation of a subset of rights that allows open source contributors to force users to (i) update to the most recent version of a model, (ii) accept new use case restrictions, or even (iii) cease using the software entirely. While this would be a departure from the traditional open source approach, the legal, reputational and moral risks related to open-sourcing AI models could justify contributors having more control over downstream uses. Recent legislative changes have also opened the door to liability of open source contributors in certain cases. The authors believe that contributors would welcome the ability to ensure that downstream users are implementing updates that address issues like bias, guardrail workarounds or adversarial attacks on their contributions. Finally, this paper addresses how this license category would interplay with RAIL licenses, and how it should be operationalized and adopted by key stakeholders such as OSS platforms and scanning tools.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_13064
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the modification and revocation of open source licences
Gagnon, Paul
Benjamin, Misha
Gauthier, Justine
Regis, Catherine
Lee, Jenny
Nordell-Markovits, Alexei
Digital Libraries
Computers and Society
Historically, open source commitments have been deemed irrevocable once materials are released under open source licenses. In this paper, the authors argue for the creation of a subset of rights that allows open source contributors to force users to (i) update to the most recent version of a model, (ii) accept new use case restrictions, or even (iii) cease using the software entirely. While this would be a departure from the traditional open source approach, the legal, reputational and moral risks related to open-sourcing AI models could justify contributors having more control over downstream uses. Recent legislative changes have also opened the door to liability of open source contributors in certain cases. The authors believe that contributors would welcome the ability to ensure that downstream users are implementing updates that address issues like bias, guardrail workarounds or adversarial attacks on their contributions. Finally, this paper addresses how this license category would interplay with RAIL licenses, and how it should be operationalized and adopted by key stakeholders such as OSS platforms and scanning tools.
title On the modification and revocation of open source licences
topic Digital Libraries
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.13064