I'm still puzzled as to how these "non-commercial" model licenses are supposed to be enforceable. Software licenses govern the redistribution of the software, not products produced with it. An image isn't GPL'd because it was produced with GIMP.
I don't think it's possible to invent copyright-like rights.
Copyleft is an example of someone successfully inventing a copyright-like right by bootstrapping off existing copyright with a specially engineered contract.
1) You and I invent our own private "copyright" for data (which is not copyrightable)
2) Everything is fine until my wife walks up to my computer and makes a copy of the data. She's not bound by our private "copyright." She doesn't even know it exists, and shares the data with her bestie.
And... our private pseudo-copyright is dead.
Also: Licenses are not the same as contracts. There are times when something can be both, one, or the other. But there are a lot of limits on how far they reach. The output of a program is rarely copyrightable by the author (as opposed to the user).
As you agreed to in our contract, you now need to compensate me for the damage caused by your failure to prevent unauthorized third-party access. Of course you're free to attempt to recover the sum you have to pay me from your wife.
> The output of a program is rarely copyrightable by the author (as opposed to the user).
The author of the program can make it a condition of letting the user use the program that the user has to assign all copyright to the author of the program, kind of like "By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed." https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/
1) You have a $1T product.
2) My wife leaks it, or a burglar does. I am a typical consumer, with say, a $20k net worth.
You have two choices:
1) Sue me, recover $20k, and be down $1T (minus $20k, plus litigation fees), and get the press of ruining the life of some innocent random person
2) Not sue me. Be down $1T (including the $20k) .
And yes, the author of a program can put whatever conditions they want into the license: "By using this program, you agree to transfer $1M into my bank account in bit coin, to give me your first-born baby, to swear fealty to me, and to give me your wife it servitude." A court can then read those conditions, have a good laugh, and not enforce them. There are very clear limits on what a court will enforce in licenses (and contracts), and owning the output of a program, and barring exceptional circumstance, courts will not enforce them:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=eb52567a-2104...
This is why programmers should learn basic law, not treat is as computer code, and consult lawyers when issues come up. Read by a lawyer, a license or contract with an unenforceable clause is as good as having no such clause.
It seems to me that the cases in the article you linked involved the author of the program arguing that their copyright automatically extended to the output without any extra contractual provisions concerning copyright assignment, so I don't think they can be used as precedent regarding the enforceability of such clauses.
I think it is quite likely a court would find that unconscionable.
The same way you can easily violate any "non-commercial" clauses of models like this one as private person or as some tiny startup, but company that decide to use them for their business will more likely just go and pay.
So it's possible to ignore license, but legal and financial risks are not worth it for businesses.
One smart thing they did was they'd check the online job listings and if a firm advertised for needing AutoCAD experience they'd check their licenses. I knew firms who got calls from Autodesk legal the DAY AFTER posting an opening.
At the end of the day, a license is a legal contract. If you agree that an image which you produce with some software will be GPL'ed, it's enforceable.
As an example, see the Creative Commons license, ShareAlike clause:
> If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
you can put whatever you want in a contract, doesn't mean it's enforceable
> In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue), no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research, and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.
First off, you have copyright law, which grants monopolies on the act of copying to the creators of the original. In order to legally make use of that work you need to either have permission to do so (a license), or you need to own a copy of the work that was made by someone with permission to make and sell copies (a sale). For the purposes of computer software, you will almost always get rights to the software through a license and not a sale. In fact, there is an argument that usage of computer software requires a license and that a sale wouldn't be enough because you wouldn't have permission to load it into RAM[0].
Licenses are, at least under US law, contracts. These are Turing-complete priestly rites written in a special register of English that legally bind people to do or not do certain things. A license can grant rights, or, confusingly, take them away. For example, you could write a license that takes away your fair use rights[1], and courts will actually respect that. So you can also have a license that says you're only allowed to use software for specific listed purposes but not others.
In copyright you also have the notion of a derivative work. This was invented whole-cloth by the US Supreme Court, who needed a reason to prosecute someone for making a SSSniperWolf-tier abridgement[2] of someone else's George Washington biography. Normal copyright infringement is evidenced by substantial similarity and access: i.e. you saw the original, then you made something that's nearly identical, ergo infringement. The law regarding derivative works goes a step further and counts hypothetical works that an author might make - like sequels, translations, remakes, abridgements, and so on - as requiring permission in order to make. Without that permission, you don't own anything and your work has no right to exist.
The GPL is the anticopyright "judo move", invented by a really ornery computer programmer that was angry about not being able to fix their printer drivers. It disclaims almost the entire copyright monopoly, but it leaves behind one license restriction, called a "copyleft": any derivative work must be licensed under the GPL. So if you modify the software and distribute it, you have to distribute your changes under GPL terms, thus locking the software in the commons.
Images made with software are not derivative works of the software, nor do they contain a substantially similar copy of the software in them. Ergo, the GPL copyleft does not trip. In fact, even if it did trip, your image is still not a derivative work of the software, so you don't lose ownership over the image because you didn't get permission. This also applies to model licenses on AI software, insamuch as the AI companies don't own their training data[3].
However, there's still something that licenses can take away: your right to use the software. If you use the model for "commercial" purposes - whatever those would be - you'd be in breach of the license. What happens next is also determined by the license. It could be written to take away your noncommercial rights if you breach the license, or it could preserve them. In either case, however, the primary enforcement mechanism would be a court of law, and courts usually award money damages. If particularly justified, they could demand you destroy all copies of the software.
If it went to SCOTUS (unlikely), they might even decide that images made by software are derivative works of the software after all, just to spite you. The Betamax case said that advertising a copying device with potentially infringing scenarios was fine as long as that device could be used in a non-infringing manner, but then the Grokster case said it was "inducement" and overturned it. Static, unchanging rules are ultimately a polite fiction, and the law can change behind your back if the people in power want or need it to. This is why you don't talk about the law in terms of something being legal or illegal, you talk about it in terms of risk.
[0] Yes, this is a real argument that courts have actually made. Or at least the Ninth Circuit.
The actual facts of the case are even more insane - basically a company trying to sue former employees for fixing it's customers computers. Imagine if Apple sued Louis Rossman for pirating macOS every time he turned on a customer laptop. The only reason why they can't is because Congress actually created a special exemption for computer repair and made it part of the DMCA.
[1] For example, one of the things you agree to when you buy Oracle database software is to give up your right to benchmark the software. I'm serious! The tech industry is evil and needs to burn down to the ground!
[2] They took 300 pages worth of material from 12 books and copied it into a separate, 2 volume work.
[3] Whether or not copyright on the training data images flows through to make generated images a derivative work is a separate legal question in active litigation.
Not necessarily; gratuitous licenses are not contracts. Licenses which happen to also meet the requirements for contracts (or be embedded in agreements that do) are contracts or components of contracts, but that's not all licenses.
> An image isn't GPL'd because it was produced with GIMP.
That's because of how the GPL is written, not because of some limitation of software licences.