I'm not whining in this case, just pointing out "they gave it out for free" is completely false, at the very least for the GNU types. It was always meant to come with plenty of strings attached, and when those strings were dodged new strings were added (GPL3, AGPL).

If I had a photographic memory and I used it to replicate parts of GPLed software verbatim while erasing the license, I could not excuse it in court that I simply "learned from" the examples.

Some companies outright bar their employees from reading GPLed code because they see it as too high of a liability. But if a computer does it, then suddenly it is a-ok. Apparently according to the courts too.

If you're going to allow copyright laundering, at least allow it for both humans and computers. It's only fair.

We spread free software for multiple purposes, one of them being the free software ethos. People using that for training proprietary models is antithetical to such ideas.

It's also an interesting double standard, wherein if I were to steal OpenAI's models, no AI worshippers would have any issue condemning my action, but when a large company clearly violates the license terms of free software, you give them a pass.