GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering? • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#91

Post by jordemort » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

invokestatic wrote: post #69

jordemort wrote: post #56

What happens when someone puts code up on GitHub with a license that says "This code may not be used for training a code generation model"? - Is GitHub actually going to pay any attention to that, or are they just going to ingest the code and thus violate its license anyway? - If they go ahead and violate the code's license, what are the legal repercussions for the resulting model? Can a model be "un-trained" from a…

By uploading your content to GitHub, you’ve granted them a license to use that content to “improve the Service over time”, as specified in the ToS[1]. That effectively “overrides” any license or term that you’ve specified for your repository, since you’ve already licensed the content to GitHub under different terms. Of course, people who are not GitHub are beholden to the terms you specify. [1] https://docs.github.co…

I think more specifically, the relevant bit is here: https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-o...

> We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like copy it to our database and make backups; show it to you and other users; parse it into a search index or otherwise analyze it on our servers; share it with other users; and perform it, in case Your Content is something like music or video.

But, it goes on to say:

> This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service, except that as part of the right to archive Your Content, GitHub may permit our partners to store and archive Your Content in public repositories in connection with the GitHub Arctic Code Vault and GitHub Archive Program.

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems ambiguous to me if this ToS is sufficient to cover CoPilot's butt in corner cases; I bet at least one lawyer is going to make some money trying to answer the question.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#92

Post by saba2008 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #11

It certainly seems to be a laundering enabler. Say that you want to un-GPL-ify some famous copylefted code that is on the training database. You type a first innocuous characters of it, then the co-pilot keeps completing the rest of the same exact code, for it offers a perfect match. If the completion is not exact, you "twiddle" it a bit until it becomes. Bang! you have a non-gpl copy of the program! Moreover, it is…

How is it different from just copy-pasting?

It does add some degree of plausible deniability (accidental violation, instead of intentional), but I don't think it would matter much.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#93

Post by jordemort » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #89

jordemort wrote: post #56

What happens when someone puts code up on GitHub with a license that says "This code may not be used for training a code generation model"? - Is GitHub actually going to pay any attention to that, or are they just going to ingest the code and thus violate its license anyway? - If they go ahead and violate the code's license, what are the legal repercussions for the resulting model? Can a model be "un-trained" from a…

I expect them to check /LICENSE file and if it deviates from standard open source license, they'll skip that repository.

They haven't made any public statements on if they're looking at LICENSE or not; I'd sure appreciate it if they did!

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#94

Post by all_rights_rsvd » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

jordemort wrote: post #56

What happens when someone puts code up on GitHub with a license that says "This code may not be used for training a code generation model"? - Is GitHub actually going to pay any attention to that, or are they just going to ingest the code and thus violate its license anyway? - If they go ahead and violate the code's license, what are the legal repercussions for the resulting model? Can a model be "un-trained" from a…

I post my code publicly, but with an "all rights reserved" licence. I don't mind everyone reading my code freely, but you can't use it for anything but learning. If I found out they were ingesting my code I would be angry. It's like training your replacement. I don't use GitHub, anyways, but now I'll definitely never even think about it.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#95

Post by varispeed » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

People write code in their spare time, often without compensation.

Then a big corporation comes in, appropriates it, repackages and sells as a new product.

It's a shameful behaviour.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#96

Post by nextaccountic » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

KMnO4 wrote: post #65

koonsolo wrote: post #54

I propose we as developers, start a secret society where we let the AI write the code, but we still claim to write it manually. In combination with the new working from home policies, we can lay at the beach all day and still be as productive as before. Who is in favor of starting it? ;)

This would be the demise of the human race. I’m not entirely opposed to that, though. When AI inevitably outperforms humans on almost all tasks, who am I to say humans deserve to be given those tasks?

In this case we should be able to work less and enjoy the benefits of automation. We just need to live in an economic system where the economic value is captured by the people at large, and not a minority that owns capital.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#97

Post by VMtest » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

throwaway3699 wrote: post #62

VMtest wrote: post #33

gonna develop my own linux-like kernel soon, with my own AI model trained on public repositories wanna see the source code of my AI model? oh, it's closed source it's just coincidence that nearly 100% of my future linux-like kernel code looks the same as linux the kernel, bear in mind that my closed-source AI model takes inspiration from GitHub Copilot, there is no way that it will copy any source code

What's the point? Linux is already open under GPL 2.

my linux-like kernel will be MIT license though

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#98

Post by nextaccountic » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #53

gutino wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the rate of product/services that machinery will produce will make that even a small tax to corporations producing everything autonomously will be enough to feed and give a quality of life to everyone with an UBI or partial time jobs. You really want to push for high productivity across all industries, even if that means sacrificing jobs in the short term, because history demonstrated after that, new and more hum…

Every decade was supposed to see fewer hours working for higher pay and quality of life. It didn't happen, as business owners (not just 1% fat cats, the owners of mom and pop shops are at least as guilty as anyone, they just sucked at scaling their avarice). So the claim that this technological revolution will be different and that it will result in a broad social safety net, universal basic income, and substantive,…

You are right that this won't happen by itself. We need another economic system, and not just hope that this time things will magically fix themselves.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#99

Post by cxr » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #89

jordemort wrote: post #56

What happens when someone puts code up on GitHub with a license that says "This code may not be used for training a code generation model"? - Is GitHub actually going to pay any attention to that, or are they just going to ingest the code and thus violate its license anyway? - If they go ahead and violate the code's license, what are the legal repercussions for the resulting model? Can a model be "un-trained" from a…

I expect them to check /LICENSE file and if it deviates from standard open source license, they'll skip that repository.

The existence of a LICENSE file is neither necessary nor sufficient to determine the terms that apply to a given work.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#100

Post by alkonaut » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #11

It certainly seems to be a laundering enabler. Say that you want to un-GPL-ify some famous copylefted code that is on the training database. You type a first innocuous characters of it, then the co-pilot keeps completing the rest of the same exact code, for it offers a perfect match. If the completion is not exact, you "twiddle" it a bit until it becomes. Bang! you have a non-gpl copy of the program! Moreover, it is…

I don’t think most of us are scared enough of being “tainted” by the sight of a GPL snippet that we’d bother. Besides, if you want to target a specific snippet so you can type the start to prime the recognition - you already saw it?

Why not just copy it and then edit it? If a snippet is changed both logically and syntactically to not resemble the original, then it’s no longer the original and you aren’t in any licensing trouble. There is no meaningful difference between that manual washing and a clean room implementation. All the ML changes here is the accidental vs deliberate. But it will be a worse wash than your manual one.