Well yes, LLMs like Claude Code are merely a "copyright violation as a service". Everyone is so focused on the next new "AI" feature but we haven't actually resolved the issue of all model providers using stolen code to train their models and their lack of transparency on sourced training data.

"Many years ago, he said, photographs were not generally seen as being copyrightable. That changed over time as people figured out what could be done with that technology and the creativity it enabled. Photography may be a good analogy for LLMs, he suggested."

I have zero trust in the FSF since they backstabbed Stallman.

EDIT: Criticizing anything from LWN, be it Debian, Linux or FSF related, results in instant downvotes. LWN is not a critical publication and just lionizes whoever has a title and bloviates on a mailing list or at a conference.

I have a feeling the people who write these haven't really used LLMs for programming because even just playing around with them will make it obvious that this makes no sense - especially if you try to use something local based that lets you rewrite the discussion at will, including any code the LLM generated. E.g. sometimes when trying to get Devstral make something for me, i let it generate whatever (sometimes buggy/not working) code it comes up with[0] and then i start editing its response to fix the bug so that further instructions are under the assumption it generated the correct code from the get go instead of trying to convince it[0] to fix the code it generated. In such a scenario there is no clear separation between LLM-generated code and manually written code nor any specific "prompt" (unless you count all snapshots of the entire discussion every time one hits the "submit" button as a series of prompts, which technically is what the LLM using as a prompt instead of what the user types, but i doubt this was what the author had in mind).

And all that without taking into account what someone commented in the article about code not even done in a single session but with plans, restarting from scratch, summarizing, etc (and there are tools to automate these too and those can use a variety of prompts by themselves that the end user isn't even aware of).

TBH i think if FSF wants to "consider LLMs" they should begin by gaining some real experience using them first - and bringing people with such experience on board to explain things for them.

[0] i do not like anthropomorphizing LLMs, but i cannot think of another description for that :-P

This is because LLMs are a type of assistive technology, usually for those with mental disabilities. It's a shame that mental disabilities are still seen as less important than physical disabilities. If one takes them seriously, one would realize that banning LLMs is inherently ableist. Just make sure that the developer takes accountability for the submitted code.

2. Ban tainted code.

Consider code that (in the old days) had been copy pasted from elsewhere. Is that any better than LLM generated code? Why yes - to make it work a human had to comb through it, tweaking as necessary, and if they did not then stylistic cues make the copy pasta quite evident. LLMs effectively originate and disguise copy pasta (including mimicking house styles), making it harder/impossible to validate the code without stepping through every single statement. The process can no longer be validated, so the output has to be. Which does not scale.