Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is what a human generates GPLv2 because it learned from GPLv2 code?
What if a human copies GPLv2 code?
GitHub Copilot
221–230 of 1001 posts
Re: GitHub Copilot
#222I want to try and make it generate a UUID and then see if I can find the original source.
Re: GitHub Copilot
#223Hi HN, we've been building GitHub Copilot together with the incredibly talented team at OpenAI for the last year, and we're so excited to be able to show it off today. Hundreds of developers are using it every day internally, and the most common reaction has been the head exploding emoji. If the technical preview goes well, we'll plan to scale this up as a paid product at some point in the future.
Is there a public API? Will it be documented? Are you open to folks porting the VSCode plugin to other editors (I.e. kakoune’s autocomplete)?
Re: GitHub Copilot
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
It shouldn't do that, and we are taking steps to avoid reciting training data in the output: https://copilot.github.com/#faq-does-github-copilot-recite-c... https://docs.github.com/en/early-access/github/copilot/resea... In terms of the permissibility of training on public code, the jurisprudence here – broadly relied upon by the machine learning community – is that training ML models is fair use. We are certain this…
> ...the jurisprudence here – broadly relied upon by the machine learning community – is that training ML models is fair use. To be honest, I doubt that. Maybe I am special, but if I am releasing some code under GPL, I really don't want it to be used in training a closed source model, which will be used in a closed source software generating code for closed source projects.
The whole point of fair use is that it allows people to copy things even when the copyright holder doesn't want them to.
For example, if I am writing a criticism of an article, I can quote portions of that article in my criticism, or modify images from the article in order to add my own commentary. Fair use protects against authors who try to exert so much control over their works that it harms the public good.
Re: GitHub Copilot
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you need to go through the suggested code to ensure it's correct, you may as well write it yourself? Not really. People are generally far faster at reading something and evaluating whether it's correct, than at writing something. In the same way it's faster to read a book than to write one. Not to mention the time it takes typing, fixing typos, etc. So this could genuinely be a huge timesaver if it helpful enoug…
I completely disagree with you. Reading code for correctness is difficult and not something most people do well at all. Reading code and reading for correctness are not the same, and most developers can write code a lot faster than they can verify it.
Sometimes you don't quite know how to implement something, without thinking about it for a while. All of us would a lot of the time search StackOverflow for the solution to a simple problem, e.g.
"recursively list all the files in a directory C#"
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/929276/how-to-recursivel...
I imagine an AI copilot could streamline this, instead of searching, reading and verifying, copy pasting, and changing the variable names to my needs, I could now just type the method name, arguments, and documentation and it would similarly fill out the code for me. Then I have to check it (as I normally would).
Re: GitHub Copilot
#226Calling it now, there will be a "Copilot considered harmful" post. If you need to go through the suggested code to ensure it's correct, you may as well write it yourself? If you glance at it and it looks about right, you can potentially overlook bugs or edge cases, you'll lose confidence in your own code since you didn't properly conceptualise it yourself. Potentially for newer developers it robs them of active exper…
As a hobbyist this is going to save me so much time. Little things like googling how to read CSVs in python for the 20th time add up and I think this should help solve that.
Re: GitHub Copilot
#227"In order to generate suggestions, GitHub Copilot transmits part of the file you are editing to the service."
Well, isn't GitHub part of Microsoft now? No wonder it has gained telemetry...
I'm a bit worried that this thing will lead to even more bugs like the typical StackOverflow copy&paste which compiles fine, runs OK, but completely doesn't understand the context and thereby introduces subtle difficult to find issues.
My personal take on autocomplete has always been that I only use it so that I can use longAndDescriptiveFunctionNames. Apart from that, if your source code is so verbose that you wish you didn't have to type all of it, something else probably already went wrong.
Re: GitHub Copilot
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
It shouldn't do that, and we are taking steps to avoid reciting training data in the output: https://copilot.github.com/#faq-does-github-copilot-recite-c... https://docs.github.com/en/early-access/github/copilot/resea... In terms of the permissibility of training on public code, the jurisprudence here – broadly relied upon by the machine learning community – is that training ML models is fair use. We are certain this…
> ...the jurisprudence here – broadly relied upon by the machine learning community – is that training ML models is fair use. To be honest, I doubt that. Maybe I am special, but if I am releasing some code under GPL, I really don't want it to be used in training a closed source model, which will be used in a closed source software generating code for closed source projects.
This is what is so miserable about the GPL progression. We went from GPLv2 (preserving everyone's rights to use code) to GPLv3 (you have to give up your encryption keys) - I think we've lost the GPL as a place where we could solve / answer these types of questions which are good ones - GPL just tanked a lot of trust in it with the (A)GPLv3 stuff especially around prohibiting other developers from specific uses of the code (which is diametrically different from earlier versions which preserved rights).
Re: GitHub Copilot
#229Gigantic caveat. > I agree to these additional telemetry terms as part of the technical preview
Right. If you’re comfortable giving access to your source files to GitHub+OpenAI, then go for it.
I’m not sure how this would apply to secret keys or flat files with customer data/PII, but in any case that makes it a non-starter for me.
Their “Please do not share this URL publicly.” Banner at the top of the page which disclosed this info makes my skin crawl a bit…
If I were only working on public projects I would be on board right away, it looks like a big time saver.
Am I being to paranoid here?
Re: GitHub Copilot
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this would fall under any reasonable definition of fair use. If I read GPL (or proprietary) code as a human I still own code that I later write. If copyright was enforced on the outputs of machine learning models based on all content they were trained on it would be incredibly stifling to innovation. Requiring obtaining legal access to data for training but full ownership of output seems like a sensible middl…
1) this is not human, it's some software 2) if I write a program that copies parts of other GPL licensed SW into my proprietary code, does that absolve me of GPL if the copying algorithm is complicated enough?
Clearly this requires some level of judgement but this isn't new, determining what is plagiarism and not requires a similar judgement call.