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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

#701

Post by xdennis »

jeremyjh wrote: post #456
ghoward wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* They both process source code as input. * They both produce software as output. * They both transform their input. * They both can combine different works to create a derivative work of each work. (Compilers do this with optimizations, especially inlining with link-time optimization.) They really do the same things, and yet, we say that the output of compilers is still under the license that the source code had. Wh…

> Why not Copilot? Because the sources used for input do not belong to the person operating the tool. If you say that doesn't matter, then you are saying open source licenses don't matter because the same thing applies - I could just run a tool (compiler) on someone else's code, and ignore the terms of their license when I redistribute the binary.

That only makes it worse.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#702

Post by mthoms »

shakna wrote: post #605
mthoms wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound quite sure that the outlying instances of direct copying wouldn't be covered by the Fair Use copyright exemption. Any particular reason for that? I tend to think it would be covered (provided it there were relatively small snippets and not entire functions).

Precedent. Google v. Oracle found 9 lines, of an "obvious" implementation to be infringing.

Right, but would 3-4 lines in the middle of a 50 line function also be infringing? What about 2 lines?

I don't know the answer. I was only surprised that the commenter seemed dead sure that any and all copying (no matter how small) would be infringing.

That just doesn't correlate with my understanding of how Fair Use works: The "amount" of the infringement is one (of several) factors in determining if something falls under Fair Use:

>The third factor assesses the amount and substantiality of the copyrighted work that has been used. In general, the less that is used in relation to the whole, the more likely the use will be considered fair.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#703

Post by mthoms »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #581
mthoms wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound quite sure that the outlying instances of direct copying wouldn't be covered by the Fair Use copyright exemption. Any particular reason for that? I tend to think it would be covered (provided it there were relatively small snippets and not entire functions).

I'm not the person you're replying to, but one strong reason is that the global reach and standardization of copyright law is far broader than the global reach and standardization of the fair use exception. A single non-US country in which GitHub Copilot is used in a way that would be infringing without the US fair use exception, and outside the scope of any such exception in that law, would be enough to cause GitHub…

Oh, absolutely.

I'm not American, but like others around here — I was just restricting the discussion to American law for simplicity's sake.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#704

Post by jkaplowitz »

mthoms wrote: post #703
jkaplowitz wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but one strong reason is that the global reach and standardization of copyright law is far broader than the global reach and standardization of the fair use exception. A single non-US country in which GitHub Copilot is used in a way that would be infringing without the US fair use exception, and outside the scope of any such exception in that law, would be enough to cause GitHub…

Oh, absolutely. I'm not American, but like others around here — I was just restricting the discussion to American law for simplicity's sake.

Fair, but GitHub/MS (same company now) can't afford to ignore other countries' law in their internal evaluations of whether globally* available products like Copilot are legal.

* Minus a few countries/regions targeted by US sanctions, I assume, though they've gradually broadened their services in sanctioned countries with the necessary licenses from OFAC.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#705

Post by mceachen »

singhkays wrote: post #641
mceachen wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely possible. What I'm building into PhotoStructure is typically called "transfer learning." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_learning PhotoStructure is entirely self-hosted, including model training and application: the public domain base models (trained on huge datasets) are fetched and cached locally. By design, none of your data (or even metadata) leaves your server. (I expect to ship this in an upco…

Nice! Will try this out. Are you planning on taking advantage of in-built neural engines like that in Apple M1 for speeding up object/facial recognition?

I'd like to, but practically speaking, I'm at the mercy of native support in the libraries I'm using. If support is added, though, it's trivial for me to add the switch as a user-definable setting.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#706

Post by salawat »

jcheng wrote: post #525
salawat wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point, can we all just agree IP is the stupidest concept to ever be layered on top of math (which programming is) and move on with non-copyrightable code?

Only if you agree that copyleft licenses are also stupid; without copyright, there's no way to prevent companies from making closed-source forks of code you wrote and intended to stay open.

Correct. Copyleft is idiocy as well. You don't really need a pay for a proprietary fork of a tool when no one can keep you out of the free one, and the proprietary stuff diffuses into the free option.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#708

Post by salawat »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #658
oefnak wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, sure. Without copyright there's no need for copyleft left, right?

You don't care about attribution and other moral rights ? (I guess these are going to depend a LOT on the jurisdiction that you're in ?)

I care, but in the long run, I care more about our descendants not having tools locked out of their hands. Facilitated information asymmetry is the root of far too many evils.

Where is your ego when you're dead and gone? Where could we be if the majority of human advancement we're not tightly clutched as trade secrets?

As someone who has done paid software engineering (yes, you can feel free to call me a hack or sell out if you wish), I've come to find that the salary I've pulled over the years has not gone to me... But keeping a roof over those I love, helping other people's projects grow, giving people a shot, etc.

My time on the other hand, gets dumped into implementing the same handful of processes doing the same damn thing, but different this time, because you can't just bloody make "Here ya go, here's your Enterprise-in-a-box".

I'd like people more people able to solve novel problems than necessarily need to retread the same path over and over. Some degree of that will always have to be done to keep the skills fresh in the population, but we could do way better at marshaling that split, and I'm convinced part of what necessitates it is creating artificial barriers through things like enforced implementation monopolization. Yes. It ensures a minimum level of novelty and variance across populations, but it also does terribly at not consuming the finite amount of human capacity for truly novel thought to innovate.

It may make societies that function based on greed and economic/fiscal measures work, but I'm not convinced other incentive structures won't keep the rolling stone of innovation from accruing moss.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#709

Post by unanswered »

dang wrote: post #639
unanswered wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You've been doing it repeatedly and it's not cool. Please just be kind. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is the clearest display yet that moderation on HN has absolutely nothing to do with your purported values like constructive criticism, and has everything to do with whether dang agrees with you or not.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#710

Post by dang »

unanswered wrote: post #709
dang wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You've been doing it repeatedly and it's not cool. Please just be kind. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is the clearest display yet that moderation on HN has absolutely nothing to do with your purported values like constructive criticism, and has everything to do with whether dang agrees with you or not.

I actually have no idea what you were arguing about, nor which side you were on, nor what your argument was. I haven't paid enough attention to know those things, because (a) I don't want to, (b) I don't need to, and (c) not doing it leaves me in the desirable state of being incapable of agreeing or disagreeing.

It's a happy fact that figuring out people's arguments is often unnecessary for moderating the threads, especially in cases where people are breaking the site guidelines. Everyone needs to follow the site guidelines regardless of what the topic is, what their argument is, and how right they are or feel they are. Please stick to the rules when posting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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