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GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

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Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#311

Post by AlotOfReading »

visarga wrote: post #304
AlotOfReading wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me that verbatim would be the only issue. It might produce lines that are similar, but not identical. The underlying question is whether the output is a derivative work of the training set? Sidestepping similar issues is why GCC and LLVM have compiler exemptions in their respective licenses.

If simple snippet similarity is enough to trigger the GPL copyright defense I think it goes too far. Seems like GPL has become an obstacle to invention. I learned to run away when I see it.

It's not limited to similar or identical code. The issue applies to anything 'derived' from copyrighted code. The issue is simply most visible with similar or identical code.

If you have code from an independent origin, this issue doesn't apply. That's how clean room designs bypass copyright. Similarly if the upstream code waives its copyright in certain types of derived works (compiler/runtime exemptions), it doesn't apply.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#312

Post by corobo »

lucideer wrote: post #179
corobo wrote: post #3

If I as an alleged human have learned purely from GPL code would that require code I write to be released under the GPL too? We should probably start thinking about AI rights at some point. Personally I'll be crediting GPT-3 as any other contributor because it sounds cool but maybe morally too in future

Your question had already been preempted in the OP. Specifically: > "but eevee, humans also learn by reading open source code, so isn't that the same thing" > - no > - humans are capable of abstract understanding and have a breadth of other knowledge to draw from > - statistical models do not > - you have fallen for marketing -- https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1410049195067674625

I preemptively commented that I'd seen that tweet three hours before your comment figuring someone was going to quote it at me haha

Preemptive, doesn't work as it turns out :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27687586

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#313

Post by notatoad »

yaitsyaboi wrote: post #152
jordemort wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Wait so does this mean a “private repo” is meaningless and GitHub can share any code in any repo with anyone?

yes, that's what that specific section means, but as always with these documents you can't just extract a single section, you need to take the document as a whole (and usually, more than one document - ToS privacy policy are usually different)

these documents are structured as granting the service provider extremely broad rights, and then the rest of the document takes away portions of those rights. so in this case they claim the right to share any code in any repo with anyone, and then somewhere else they specify which code they won't share, and with whom they won't share it.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#314

Post by rjbwork »

MadcapJake wrote: post #178
ballenf wrote: post #171

I think the distraction is against how disconnected reality is becoming from copyright/intellectual property regulations. It's still amazing to me that (US-centric context here), it's well established that instructions how to turn raw ingredients into a cake are not protectable but code that results in transforming one set of numbers into another are protectable. AI is just making the silliness of that distinction mo…

Code is not the same as a recipe. Recipes are more like specifications. They leave out the implementation. Code has structural and algorithmic details that just have no comparable concept in recipes.

>They leave out the implementation. Code has structural and algorithmic details that just have no comparable concept in recipes.

That is really quite debatable in some contexts. Declarative languages like Prolog, SQL, etc. declare what they want and the system figures out how to produce it. Much like a recipe, really.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#315

Post by MadAhab »

ralph84 wrote: post #153

I get the sense that GitHub wants this to be litigated so the case law can be established. Until then it’s just a bunch of internet lawyers arguing with each other.

I got the sense they saw Google beating Sun/Java in the supreme court and said "We'll be fine, lets move the release up"

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#316

Post by akagusu »

For years people have warned about hosting the majority of world's open source code in a proprietary platform that belongs to a for profit company. These people were called lunatics, fundamentalists, radicals, conspiracy theorists, and many other names.

Well, they were ignored and this is the result. A for profit company built a proprietary system using every code hosted in its platform without respecting the code license.

There will be a lot of people saying this is not a license violation but it is, and more, it is an exploitation of other people work.

Right now I'm asking myself when people will stop supporting these kind of company that exploit people's work without giving anything in return to people and society while making a huge amount of profit.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#317

Post by bobsomers »

naikrovek wrote: post #286

I don't see the point of this tool, independent of the resulting code being derivative of GPL code or not. being able to produce valid code is not the bottleneck of any developer effort. no projects fail because code can't be typed quickly enough. the bottleneck is understanding how the code works, how to design things correctly, how to make changes in accordance with the existing design, how to troubleshoot existing…

Completely agree. If anything, I see tools like this actually decreasing engineering speed. I don't see how it doesn't lead to shipping large quantities of code the team didn't vet carefuly, which has is a recipe for subtle and hard to find bugs. Those kinds of bugs are much more expensive to find a squash.

What we really need aren't tools that help us write code faster, but tools that help us understand the design of our systems and the interaction complexity of that design.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#318

Post by lucideer »

corobo wrote: post #312
lucideer wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question had already been preempted in the OP. Specifically: > "but eevee, humans also learn by reading open source code, so isn't that the same thing" > - no > - humans are capable of abstract understanding and have a breadth of other knowledge to draw from > - statistical models do not > - you have fallen for marketing -- https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1410049195067674625

I preemptively commented that I'd seen that tweet three hours before your comment figuring someone was going to quote it at me haha Preemptive, doesn't work as it turns out :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27687586

Nice catch

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#320

Post by jonathankoren »

yunohn wrote: post #246
not2b wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or: they used the entire open source corpus because they thought it was free for the taking, and when people point out that it is not (that there are licenses) they spin that (claim that only 0.1% of output is directly copied, but that would mean 100 lines in 100k program) and pass any risk onto the user (saying it is their responsibility to vet any code they produce). So they aren't saying that users are in the clea…

> 100 lines in 100k program The intention is autocomplete boilerplate, not write a kernel.

This is not a difference in kind.

Autocomplete, do you have anything to say to the commenter ?

“This isn’t the best thing to say.”

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