I’m really dumbfounded by the Copilot team decision to not exclude GPL licensed code. Why was this direction chosen? Is the inclusion of GPL really worth the risk and potential Google v. Oracle lawsuit? I’d like to know the reasoning.
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Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
581–590 of 672 posts
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#582Remember that unlicensed content is still licensed. Generally the implicit license of a work is less permissive. So however you feel about this using GPL code, the situation is even worse for most ML models that have no license at all to use their training data.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've copied plenty of Microsoft sample code verbatim, because the Win32 API sucks and their samples usually get the error handling right. But, I can't think of a single scenario where I've copied something from Stack Overflow. I'm searching for the idea of how to solve a problem, and typically the relevant code given is either too short to bother copying, or it's long and absolutely not consistent with how I want to…
"Too short to bother copying"? I copy single words of text to avoid typing and typos. I would never type out even a single line of code when I could paste and edit.
That's fair use.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#584From the Copilot FAQ: > The technical preview includes filters to block offensive words And somehow their filters missed f*k? That doesn’t give a lot of confidence in their ability filter more nuanced text. Or maybe it only filters truly terrible offensive words like “master”.
In my testing of Copilot, the content filters only work on input , not output. Attempting to generate text from code containing "genocide" just has Copilot refuse to run. But you can still coerce Copilot to return offensive output given certain innocuous prompts.
does it also censor "lesbian"?
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#585So this makes it official... this post[0] and the comments on the announcement[1] concerned about licensing issues were absolutely correct... and this product has the possibility of getting you sued if you use it. Unfortunately for GitHub, there's no turning back the clocks. Even if they fix this, everyone that uses it has been put on notice that it copies code verbatim and enables copyright infringement. Worse, ther…
nobody fucking cares
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it still a legal concern if I'm just coding because I want to solve a problem and I'm not trying to use it to do business?
Yes: not all code on GitHub is licensed in a way that lets you use it at all . People focus on GPL as if that were the tough case; but, in addition to code (like mine) under AGPL (which you need to not use in a product that exposes similar functionality to end users) there is code that is merely published under "shared source" licenses (so you can look, but not touch) and even literally code that is stolen and leaked…
the gpl is never enforced. companies openly flaunt violations all the time.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well... the whole training set is licensed, so you can't really get rid of it. I think that the technology they are using for this is just not ready.
Just retrain the model using properly licensed code? ("just" is doing a ton of heavy lifting, but let's be real, that's not impossibly hard)
There is no such thing as properly licensed code because it is a function of the what is legally acceptable for your company and what it intends to do with the work.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#588So this makes it official... this post[0] and the comments on the announcement[1] concerned about licensing issues were absolutely correct... and this product has the possibility of getting you sued if you use it. Unfortunately for GitHub, there's no turning back the clocks. Even if they fix this, everyone that uses it has been put on notice that it copies code verbatim and enables copyright infringement. Worse, ther…
Adding to this: I run product security for a large enterprise, and I've already gotten the ball rolling on prohibiting copilot for all the reasons above. It's too big a risk. I'd be shocked if GitHub could remedy the negative impressions minted in the last day or so. Even with other compensating controls around open source management, this flies right under the radar with a c130's worth of adverse consequences.
Same here. I’ve directed our teams and infra managers that we must be able to block the use of copilot for our firm’s code.
Id be very surprised if the other large enterprises that I have worked at downs doing exactly the same thing. Too much legal risk, for practically no benefit.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
No-one cares about this. People have no clue about licenses and just copy-paste whatever. If someone gets access to their code and see all the violations they're screwed anyway.
Ask your legal department about that. Sure, engineers don't care about licensing at all, but we are not the only players here.
Are legal departments in the habit of reviewing all code line by line? Seems like that would be cost prohibitive...
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you also block stack overflow and give guidance to never copy code from that website or elsewhere on the Internet? I'm legitimately curious - my org internally officially denounces the copying of stack overflow snippets. Thankfully for my role it's moot as I mostly work with an internal non-public language, for better or worse, and I have no idea how well that's followed elsewhere in the wider company.
Apples and oranges: Stack overflow snippets are explicitly granted under a permissive license, as long as you attribute. https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing It appears that the code that copilot is using is created under a huge variety of licenses, making it risky. On the other hand, a small snippet in a function that is derived from many existing pieces of other code may fall under fair use, even if it is not u…
Stack Overflow and Copilot are similar. Usage of both routinely violates licenses. Stack Overflow content is licensed under CC-BY-SA. Terms [1]:
* Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
* ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
In over a decade of software engineering, I've seen many reuses of Stack Overflow content, occasionally with links to underlying answers. All Stack Overflow content use I've seen would clearly fail the legal terms set out by the license.
I suspect Copilot usage will similarly fail a stringent interpretation of underlying licenses, and will similarly face essentially no enforcement.