John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a license ("a gift"). That's of course great and awesome and super nice, but he's not been painstakingly and thanklessly maintaining some key linux component for the last 20 years or something like that. It's an entirely different thing; he made a thing, sold it, and then when he couldn't sell more of it, gave it away. That's nice! But it's not what most people who are deep into open source mean by the term.

Has anyone else noticed a cultural shift around monetization of output? I think there wasn't as much back when I first started using open-source programs, both as a user, and a small-time contributor for decades now. And I've noticed this on other things too. A short while ago, someone on Reddit pointed out that something on Google Maps was wrong and so I went and submitted a fix and told them how to and I received a barrage of comments about working for free for a corporation that's making money off me.

I think if people want a revshare on things then perhaps they should release under a revshare license. Providing things under open licenses and then pulling a bait-and-switch saying "oh the license isn't actually that you're not supposed to be doing that" doesn't sit right with me. Just be upfront and open with things.

The point of the Free Software licenses is that you can go profit off the software, you just have certain obligations back. I think those are pretty good standards. And, in fact, given the tendency towards The Revshare License that everyone seems to learn towards, I think that coming up with the GPL or MIT must have taken some exceptional people. Good for them.

I think one of the more prominent issues folks take with mass training on OSS is that the companies doing it are now profiting for having done it.

In his follow-up post he talks about him open sourcing old games as a gift, and he doesn't much care how people receive that gift, just that they do.

He doesn't acknowledge that Anthropic, OpenAI, etc, are profiting while the original authors are not.

The original authors most of the time didn't write the software to profit. But that doesn't mean they don't care if other people profit from their work.

It's odd to me that he doesn't acknowledge this.

All due respect to Carmack but I think his take is probably influenced by his investment in his own AI company. There doesn’t seem to be many on this space who have any ethical or moral problems with profiting from the work of others and not contributing anything back to the commons. If we all intended our work in OSS the way he did maybe we’d all see it his way too.

Copy left licenses are generally intended, afaict, to protect the commons and ensure people have access to the source. AI systems seem to hide that. And they contribute nothing back.

Maybe they need updating, IANAL. But I’d be hesitant to believe that everyone should be as excited as Carmack is.

There's one elephant in the room that's not being addressed:

Training an AI on GPL code and then having it generate equivalent code that is released under a closed source license seems like a good way to destroy the copy-left FOSS ecosystem.

Most of FOSS is not a free gift, but asks for some form of repay.

MIT asks for credit. GPL asks or credit and GPL'ing of things built atop. Unlicense is a free gift, but it is a minority.

AI reproduces code while removing credit and copyleft from it and this is the problem.

I find it pretty simple:

- OSS is valuable for decentralizing power and influence

- AI as it is being developed is likely to centralize it

I think if you've been set for life since the late 90s/early 2000s and didn't really have to work another day in your life if you didn't want to, it's a lot easier to be cavalier about giving away some of your output from way back when.

He can easily afford to be altruistic in this regard.

But Carmack isn't wired for empathy; he has never been.

I think when people give gifts they do expect something in return, at least the acknowledgment that it was THEY who gave the gift. More fame to them. What I don't like is if they start pointing out how people who don't follow their example are evil. The key word I've come to think in terms of is "self-serving".

In my mind, AI is making a lot of engineers, including Carmack, seem fairly thoughtless. At the other moments in recent history where technology has displaced workers, labor has either had to fight some very bloody battles or had stronger labor organization. Tech workers are highly atomized now, and if you have to work to live, you're negotiating on your own.

It seems like Carmack, like a lot of tech people, have forgotten to ask the question: who stands to benefit if we devalue the US services economy broadly? Who stands to lose? It seems like a lot of these people are assuming AI will be a universal good. It is easy to feel that way when you are independently wealthy and won't feel the fallout.

Even a small % of layoffs of the US white collar work force will crash the economy, as our economy is extremely levered. This is what happened in 2008: like 7% of mortgages failed, and this caused a cascade of failures we are still feeling today.

Prople choosing MIT-0, BSD0 or some equivalently permissive licence do gift their code to the world without expecting anything in return.

Other FOSS developers, not so much. They are the ones who are exploited.

I've been wondering, Stallman was driven to create free software after an incident trying to get the code for firmware on his office printer. I'm wondering if today, would he have just reverse engineered it with AI?

Edit: I'm also thinking of what he did rewriting all of Symbolics code for LISP machines

(similar to the person that accidentally hacked all vacuum of a certain manufacturer trying to gain access to his robot vacuum? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/feb/24/acciden...)

I imagine you would be enthusiastic about this if you’re running an AI startup/lab, yeah

Surely we can all agree that there is a difference between:

- Sharing/working on something for free with the hopes that others like it and maybe co tribute back.

- Sharing something for free so that a giant corporation can make several trillion dollars and use my passion to train a machine for (including, but not limited to) drone striking a school.

Im convinced a lot of open source proponents dont really like open source based on all the complaints about how the software is used.

> and the GPL would prevent outright exploitation by our competitors, but those were to allay fears of my partners to allow me to make the gift.

I can understand his stance on AI given this perspective. I have a harder time empathizing his frustrations. Did he also have a hard time coming to terms with the need for AGPL?

Well, if Carmack wants to give gifts to AI companies then he's free to do it, but it doesn't mean that other people want it too.

I think this debate is mainly about the value of human labor. I guess when you're a millionaire, it's much easier to be excited about human labor losing value.

IMO code generated by AI (which was trained on a lot of copyleft codebases) ought to be systematically on an open-source copyleft license.

Keep in mind, Carmack heads an AI company now. His opinion should be viewed with that context.

There's a nice interview with Stallman where he's asked about this: what are people's motivation for contributing to Free software.

https://youtu.be/ucXYWG0vqqk?t=1889

I find him speaking really soothing.

I said it just recently[0] and I'll say it again: those who're big on open source (or at least copyleft) should be jumping hard on the AI opportunity. The core purpose of copyleft is to ensure the freedom of users to do whatever they want with the covered works, chained ad infinitum. Letting AI at said works (and more) now means even more freedom, as now users can trivially (compared to previously) update that code to fit their use case more precisely, or port it to another language, or whatever.

I really can't see a valid reason to be against it, beyond something related to profiting in some way by restricting access, which - I would think - is the antithesis of copyleft/permissively licensed open source.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47259850

There is code I gift to the world that I license as MIT or similar and there is code I publish as a means for furthering what I perceive as a advanced society which I license as GPL or similar.

I don't ask anyone to share my ideals but conflating these two is dishonest.

I feel similarly to Carmack, and have felt this way since the late 1990s when I was in college.

Open sourcing code is a form of power, power to influence, inspire, and propagate one's worldview on whomever reads that code. Thank you OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, thank you for amplifying the voices of all us open source contributors!

As I understand it, the anti-AI stance of open source software people in particular has nothing to do with AI learning from code bases, and everything to do with AI slop clogging all unrestricted community feedback channels.

everyone with a paid house and a fat 401K is pretty chill with AI, and giving gifts and being all so generous

meanwhile, in the trenches, rent and bills are approaching 2/3 of paycheck and food the other 2/3, while at the same time the value of our knowledge and experience are going down to zero (in the eyes of the managerial class)

'ai training magnifies the gift' ... sure thing ai training magnifies a lot of things

Model distillation is gift sharing then. It's settled, Carmack said it.

> those were to allay fears of my partners to allow me to make the gift

I respect Carmack so much more now. I always scratched my head why he made Quake GPL. It was such a waste. Now it doesn't matter anymore. I so thankful copyleft is finally losing its teeth. It served its purpose 30 years ago, we don't need it anymore.

Personally for me I don't see it as gift, he licensed out the engine but didn't want to be in the engine business, after selling enough it feels he just put it out there so it's his stamp forever with the GPL infection. I think he already felt the diminishing returns at the time. He knew about the sharing of floppy discs and hacker scene and eventually someone would've done it and I think he felt cornered and said fuck it might as well put it out there to beat them to it.

This fellow Shawnee Mission East alum gets it.

Thinking of open source as a gift is such a strange take. It implies that the relationship is merely a transaction where the giftee is the beneficiary and the gifter is a philanthropist. It has subtle financial undertones, and a sense that gifters are somehow morally superior.

It is far healthier to see it as a collaboration. The author publishes the software with freedoms that allow anyone to not only use the software, but crucially to modify it and, hopefully, to publish their changes as well so that the entire community can benefit, not just the original author or those who modify it. It encourages people to not keep software to themselves, which is in great part the problem with proprietary software. Additionally, copyleft licenses ensure that those freedoms are propagated, so that malicious people don't abuse the system, i.e. avoiding the paradox of tolerance.

Far be it from me to question the wisdom of someone like Carmack, but he's not exactly an authority on open source. While id has released many of their games over the years, this is often a few years after the games are commercially relevant. I guess it makes sense that someone sees open source as a "gift" they give to the world after they've extracted the value they needed from it. I have little interest in what he has to say about "AI", as well.

Hey John, where can I find the open source projects released by your "AI" company?

Ah, there's physical_atari[1]. Somehow I doubt this is the next industry breakthrough, but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.

[1]: https://github.com/Keen-Technologies/physical_atari

TL;DR: I really wanted to use a more permissive license so I don't mind AI scraping my code.

Fine for him, but it's totally reasonable for people to want to use the GPL and not have it sneakily bypassed using AI.

[flagged]

John Carmack seems to think isomorphic plagiarism and piracy bleed though is good for FOSS.

This is demonstrably incorrect given how LLM are built, and he should retire instead of trolling people that still care about workmanship. =3

"A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ