“Artists gotta eat but not programmers”. Commoditize your complements at the societal level.
Not a great philosophy when you realize that the set of things we all love is probably empty. Well, maybe it contains kittens.
He clearly states that for him, abandoning Linux is ‘not possible right now’. Which makes sense, because GNU/Linux has been the free user-friendly alternative. What else do people expect him to do? Jump ship to BSD or GNU/Hurd and expect his entire workflow to work perfectly on day one? Start painting using pencil and paper, completely changing the nature of his work from day to day?
Moreover, if Linux, Ubuntu, or Debian (I’m not quite up to date on that) have accepted AI contributions, it’s because their maintainers have decided to accept them. It’s not like David has been vibecoding his tools to replace human-made software; he just can’t be expected to flawlessly work around everyone else who decides to do that. Contrasting him exercising control over his own work to stifle AI and choosing to (at least temporarily) tolerate others not doing the same with theirs (that he in turn makes use of) as some kind of hypocrisy is in extremely bad taste.
By his own standards then, I can say “Well I’m ok to use ComfyUI because its developers have explicitly said it’s fine to use with common AI models”. Like his Linux argument, it completely ignores what IP those models were trained on.
He takes the position: “My art is released Creative Commons except for AI”. I expect many open source programmers feel the same way, but he’s quite happy not to even discuss that and instead take the position that the maintainers said it’s fine.
A great number of doctors, lawyers, artists, programmers. etc donate their time doing professional level work to worthy causes. Whatever anyone does with AI is not in the same category.
“I don't like their policy, but I accept it as it is because it is not possible right now for me to paint on something else.”
these licenses are irrevocable and you can't just "backport" additional restrictions
https://creativecommons.org/faq/#what-happens-if-the-author-...
For CC By-Sa works the new one might also not be strictly less permissive, because applying the restriction should allow people deriving derivatives to do the same via the share alike clause when they previously couldn't (though I didn't actually check the wording this person is using so this is just assuming the restriction is applied like I think it ought to be).
Another point is that any updates to existing works will only be available under the new licence. This might seem irrelevant to drawings and paintings, but the author has on occasion made changes to his older works for one reason or another, so at least the resulting newer versions would be protected by the additional terms (assuming they’re legally in the clear, of course).
Copyright was fully intended to allow authors to control how their work is used.
fleshmonad•47m ago