I might suggest that exploiting the commons does not diminish the value or accessibility of the commons. Indeed, it spreads knowledge faster.
Equally I'd suggest that the commons is not free. It has to be paid for by someone. Wikipedia exists by begging for donations. Google sells advertising (as does StackOverflow as job listings) etc.
I mean, the first carpenter who took "common knowledge" and wrote a (paid for) book did the same thing. Knowledge is definitely not free, and it costs money to spread it.
(As an aside, I've been using LLMs for free all year.)
All through history people have exploited the commons. The printing press, books, universities, education, radio, television, through computers, Google, sites like SO. LLMs are just the latest step in a long long line of history.
If you know of the commons, you near certainly, know of the “tragedy of the commons’. It is VERY clear that exploiting the commons diminishes its value.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Over grazing common pasture land, results in its decimation.
There are national and international level bodies required to ensure we dont kill all the rhinos. Hell - that we dont kill all the people.
The printing press, universities, education - these are NOT commons in many places, nor do they function as commons. Let alone function as LLMs.
Common knowledge is not the same as the commons.
> It is VERY clear that exploiting the commons diminishes its value.
does it diminish, if the commons is knowledge based, such as online sources? Those sources does not truly disappear after the information is extracted and placed into an LLM.
Unlike a physical commons, which has limitations on use, informational commons don't.
So the fact that someone else is able to gain more value out of the knowledge than others is not a reason to make them scummy - as if they alone don't deserve access to the knowledge that you claim should be free.
If contributors, after seeing how someone else is able to make profits off previously freely available knowledge, feel that they somehow now suddenly deserve to be paid after the fact, then i dont know how to say it but to call it sour grapes.