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GitHub Copilot is generally available

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Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#201

Post by amelius »

dannytatom wrote: post #54

I've enjoyed using it for free, but not sure it's worth the $10/mo yet. When it works great, it's a nice-to-have for speeding up development but has yet to give me anything I wouldn't be able to just write myself. And when I wish it would give me the answer to something I don't know how to do, it spits out something very wrong. Also feels kind of icky to train on open source projects and then charge for the output.

> Also feels kind of icky to train on open source projects and then charge for the output.

How would you feel if they just provided the software without the model, assuming you could train it yourself on open-source code in an instant?

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#202

Post by ceeplusplus »

johnfn wrote: post #190
candiddevmike wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That money isn't going to the folks who wrote the code to begin with though. I think that's where "it should be free" has merit, GitHub is making money on the backs of others.

What? Should I have to reimburse the author of every tutorial and Stack Overflow post I read on my journey to becoming a software engineer?

Those authors are getting views and imaginary internet points for their work, which is often times more valuable than money to programmer types. It's not like people write SO posts for a salary.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#203

Post by wyager »

mccorrinall wrote: post #162
colechristensen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

copilot also got its training sets for free and not really with any kind of consent from the owners of that code, and it's really quite ambiguous as to if what it's doing violates many different open source licenses of its training data Microsoft is selling AI services based on training data they don't own and didn't acquire rights to, nobody writing the licenses of the code it's using had the opportunity to address…

You need to require rights for scraping publicly available resources? Damn, rip Google.

You need to acquire rights for copy/pasting my code and selling it in a book, for example.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#204

Post by jwilk »

bil7 wrote: post #12
freedomben wrote: post #5

Does copilot learn from and suggest patterns in the same codebase that you're working, or does it just pull from the huge pool of projects on GH? How well does copilot help with languages like Elixir that are less common? WIth TypeScript it's been remarkable, but that's one of the most popular and surely very familiar to devs and GH, so I would expect less popular like Elixir to not perform as well. Does copilot work…

> suggest patterns in the same codebase that you're working Sometimes, with variable results. I think I've only observed it guess patterns from the current directory > Does copilot work for shell scripts? Yes, it gave me this earlier today while editing my .zshrc: # kill a process on a given port killport() { lsof -i :$1 | awk 'NR!=1 {print $2}' | xargs kill }

lsof supports machine-readable mode:

  lsof -i ":$1" -Fp | tr -d p

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#205

Post by thamer »

samth wrote: post #36
ahnick wrote: post #3

What's the criteria for being considered "a maintainer of a popular open source project"? They never actually publish the criteria anywhere from what I can tell. They just say visit the subscription page and if you are eligible it should be available to you and if you see a charge then you are not eligible. I think though they should still be transparent about what their metric is for determining popular projects on…

At a minimum, 4.3k stars is not enough, because I don't qualify.

Reporting on my own experience, I got access to Copilot a few days after it was announced and am currently not expected to pay for it.

I started a project that currently has 9.4k stars (now mostly maintained by someone else), and still maintain a project that has 2.5k stars.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#206

Post by DustinBrett »

DustinBrett wrote: post #187
dannytatom wrote: post #54

I've enjoyed using it for free, but not sure it's worth the $10/mo yet. When it works great, it's a nice-to-have for speeding up development but has yet to give me anything I wouldn't be able to just write myself. And when I wish it would give me the answer to something I don't know how to do, it spits out something very wrong. Also feels kind of icky to train on open source projects and then charge for the output.

I went to see the pay URL and it said I was eligible to get it for free. Not sure if that works for some people who contrib to other OSS repo's, but I was about to give up on it when I saw I didn't have to pay, so might be worth checking.

Also, $10/mo is not so bad but I am not in the place right now for more subscriptions. I am in the process of stopping several at the moment.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#207

Post by w4ffl35 »

Hamcha wrote: post #195

I've been using Copilot non-stop on every hobby project I have ever since they've let me in (2021/07/13) and I am honestly flabbergasted they think it's worth 10$/mo. My experience using it till this day is the following: - It's an amazing all-rounder autocomplete for most boilerplate code. Generally anything that someone who's spent 5 minutes reading the code can do, Copilot can do just as well. - It's terrible if y…

I've also been using this for months, and would not pay for it. I think i might be getting it for free actually as I haven't been asked to pay yet.

I came to the same conclusion as you, you can see comments I made elsewhere in this thread. I'm not thrilled with it.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#208

Post by josephcsible »

tpxl wrote: post #165
danuker wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also its users might be violating the GPL. https://www.infoworld.com/article/3627319/github-copilot-is-...

How can the user be violating the license, not the distributor? If I give you a binary that gives you a Disney movie, it's not you violating the copyright, it's me. The copilot itself is violating the copyright, not its users.

If you're making software just for your own use, you're right. But most people who make software do distribute it.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#209

Post by wtetzner »

tpxl wrote: post #165
danuker wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also its users might be violating the GPL. https://www.infoworld.com/article/3627319/github-copilot-is-...

How can the user be violating the license, not the distributor? If I give you a binary that gives you a Disney movie, it's not you violating the copyright, it's me. The copilot itself is violating the copyright, not its users.

If the copilot users then distribute the source they got from it, they are at that point violating copyright.

E.g., if I take that Disney movie, incorporate it into my own movie, and distribute it, then I'm also violating copyright.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#210

Post by remram »

presentation wrote: post #121
matthewmacleod wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It is completely valid, understandable, and reasonable to have a variety of different feelings and views about how specific code and specific licenses are used. This is particularly the case when we see the emergence of new technologies that use it in different ways. Different people may have a wide variety of equally valid views about how it is incorporated into that system. There's nothing inconsistent, confus…

I think the issue is not that it’s trained on open source code but that it’s trained on code whose licenses may not permit it. If you license your project in a permissive way then I don’t see a problem.

Most "permissive" licenses still require attribution.
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