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All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

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Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#431

Post by thrashh »

_Understated_ wrote: post #272
unanswered wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you apparently think fair use is something you just think about real hard in order to see how you feel about it in a given situation demonstrates that you do not understand the concept of fair use. There are rules.

Yeah, I realise that now. However, where does one draw the line between fair use and derivative works? Creating something based on other stuff (Google creating AI books from the existing ones for example) would possibly be fair use I think but would it not also be derivative works?

There's no clear line and there can never be because the world is too complex. We leave up determination to the court system.

Google Books is considered fair use because they got sued and successfully used fair use as a defense. Until someone sues over Copilot, everyone is an armchair lawyer.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#432

Post by rubyist5eva »

jefftk wrote: post #290
rubyist5eva wrote: post #140

Open source developers need a new kind of license with a ML model training clause, so there is no more ambiguity if they don't want their code to be used in this way.

That doesn't work: your suggestion applies at too late a stage in the flowchart. It looks like: 1. Do you need a license to use materials for training, or to use the output model? 2. If so, does the code's license allow this? GitHub is claiming 'no' for #1, that they do not need any sort of license to the training materials. This is reasonably standard in ML; it's also how GPT-3 etc were trained. Now, whether a court…

If the answer is 'no' for #1 than the GPL might as well not exist because now we can just launder it through co-pilot and close it off, a rather distorted interpretation of "fair use" if you ask me.

"Dear copilot, I'm writing a Unix-like operating system...."

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#433

Post by b3morales »

nonfamous wrote: post #363
_Understated_ wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By comparison, Copilot is even more obviously fair use. Not sure I see it that way. If I take your hard work that you clearly marked with a GPL license and then make money from it, not quite directly, but very closely, how is that fair use? Or legal? Copying and storing a book isn't recreating another book from it. Copilot is creating new stuff from the contents of the "books" in this case. Edit: I misunderstood fa…

For your specific case, “take your hard work that you clearly marked with a GPL license and then make money from it”, you don’t even need to rely on fair use. As long as you comply with the terms of the GPL, making money with the code is perfectly acceptable, and the FSF even endorses the practice. [1] Red Hat is but one billion-dollar example. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DoesTheGPLAllow...

But the person making money from the GPL code has to follow the terms of the license. Attribution, sharing modifications, etc.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#434

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

shakna wrote: post #301
tedunangst wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not possible to get copilot to output a transformed version of the input?

Transformed output _may_ fall under fair use. However - Copilot directly recites code. That is _very unlikely_ to fall under fair use. Redistributing the exact same code, in the same form, for the same purpose, probably means that Copilot, and thus the people responsible for it, are infringing.

> "However - Copilot directly recites code."

Sounds like that wouldn't be difficult to fix? Transform the code to an intermediate representation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_representation) as a pre-processing stage, which ditches any non-essential structure of the code and eliminates comments, variable names, etc., before running the learning algorithms on it. Et voila, much like a human learning something and reimplementing it, only essential code is generated without any possibility of accidentally regurgitating verbatim snippets of the source data.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#435

Post by 63 »

habitue wrote: post #353

I am really confused by HN's response to copilot. It seems like before the twitter thread on it went viral, the only people who cared about programmers copying (verbatim!) short snippets of code like this would be lawyers and executives. Suddenly everyone is coming out of the woodworks as copyright maximalists? I know HN loves a good "well actually" and Microsoft is always suspect, but let's leave the idea of code la…

Firstly it's important to remember that HN is not a single person with a single opinion, but many people with conflicting opinions. Personally I'm just interested in the copyright discussion for the sake of it because I find it interesting. Though, I imagine there's also an amount of feelings of unfairness.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#436

Post by russdpale »

Who cares? Seriously? Copilot has ripped off the absurd charade around licensing and code.

It isn't any kind of copyright infringement. The AI is not copying and pasting code that is has found, it is rewriting the code from scratch on its own.

We keep trying to take old ways and meld them to the internet, and its just not appropriate and it doesn't work.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#437

Post by BlueTemplar »

_Understated_ wrote: post #92

Ok, my curiosity has been fired here... I have conjured up two scenarios here: Let's say I use copilot to generate a bunch of code for an app, something substantial, and it regurgitates a load of bits and pieces from many sources it got from GitHub, I'd assume there won't be any attribution in it... it will be as if Copilot made the code itself (I know it sort of does but lets not split hairs!). I'm guessing the prev…

Copilot is just a tool, legally it cannot "make code", you're the one making it.

See also : Napster, including how it was condemned for facilitating copyright infringement (what Microsoft is risking here, though the offense is likely to be much milder, of course).

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#438

Post by stusmall »

habitue wrote: post #353

I am really confused by HN's response to copilot. It seems like before the twitter thread on it went viral, the only people who cared about programmers copying (verbatim!) short snippets of code like this would be lawyers and executives. Suddenly everyone is coming out of the woodworks as copyright maximalists? I know HN loves a good "well actually" and Microsoft is always suspect, but let's leave the idea of code la…

I've always cared but never talked about it. Someone copy and pasting code from a source that is clearly forbidden (free software, reverse engineered code, leaked source code, etc) isn't an interesting thing to talk about. It's obviously wrong.

Also people rarely do it; I've caught maybe a couple instances of it in my career and I never really thought too much about them again. This tool helps make it a lot easier and more common. I have a feeling other people chiming in are also in the camp of "Oh, this is going to be a thing now, huh?"

I also can't help but to think that my negative opinion of it isn't solely based on this provenance issue. While it's cool it seems questionable about how practical it is. If the value was more clear I think I could stomach the risk a bit better.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#439

Post by luffapi »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #417

Open source is about love, sharing, helping out the fellow coder. Coderz of the past hated all this licensing and copyright BS. Your code, used to train this NN, is making the world a better place, I'd be content with that.

Nothing about further enriching Microsoft and continuing the network effects behind a closed source “social network”, is making the world a better place. Quite the opposite really.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#440

Post by mehdix »

qayxc wrote: post #309
mehdix wrote: post #170

GitHub's Copilot looks like a "code laundering" machine to me.

Why and how? I'm honestly interested in an answer here. What exactly is the difference between a machine learning patterns and techniques from looking at code and people doing it? Is every programer who ever gazed at GPL'ed code guilty of plagiarism and licensing violations because everything they write has to be considered derivative work now?

I can think of certain things here. As human beings we have limitations. We get tired of gazing at code, GPLE'ed or not. GitHub's clusters don't. It puts fair use of copyrighted content under question. The next concern I have, is what happens when Copilot produces certain code verbatim? I saw the other day on HN that it produced some Quake code verbatim. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287
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