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GitHub Copilot is generally available

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Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#591

Post by muzani »

LrnByTeach wrote: post #567
lsh123 wrote: post #555

I assume that Copilot uses open source projects on GitHub to “learn” what to suggest. Some of these projects might be under, say, GPL v3. A developer uses Copilot for a commercial project and Copilot insert a complete function from a GPL v3 code into this project. Someone notices this and sues the commercial project for breaking GPL v3. Will GitHub pickup the tab?

a person bought a hammer/knife from a shop and used it to hurt another person. When the victim sues the attacker, can the manufacturer of hammer/knife pick up the tab?

Not the same. Probably theft laws are more similar. A thief steals a knife and sells it to a knife seller. The knife seller sells you the knife. Under law, stolen property belong to the person it was stolen from, and sales are not valid. The original owner of the knife claims it back from you.

But being digital, the knife was just copied and the original owner still has one, but you also have theirs without their permission. So there's much less sympathy for the victim.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#592

Post by LrnByTeach »

cdiamand wrote: post #335
thdxr wrote: post #309

This has been the biggest productivity improvement to my workflow in years No it doesn't "understand what I'm doing" or "get everything right" but that's hardly the point It's often reducing the amount of labor I'm doing by hitting the keyboard by guessing 90% correctly what I was going to type It also often saves me from having to google how to do something, it's effectively serving me a search result right along my…

Same here. This has absolutely helped improve the speed at which I code and reduced the cognitive burden significantly. It's definitely not perfect, but it's worth the price to me and if I can pay and help the product improve, it's a no-brainer.

> it absolutely helped improve the speed at which I code and reduced the cognitive burden significantly.

improved speed and reduced cognitive burden

Just these two justifies the $10/month , despite of the ten other dozen drawbacks of Copilot.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#593

Post by anonymouse008 »

I was wondering what languages they support. With Swift being a protocol first language, most of the 'boiler plate' ends up being handled. I guess it goes to show that Swift is beyond your normal power tool. Here's an example of something that just blew my mind recently, on the front page of CoPilot: Memoization.

HackingWithSwift shows how this process gets rocket wings with Swift[0] (skip to the end for the mind melter)

[0] https://www.hackingwithswift.com/plus/high-performance-apps/...

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#594

Post by Volundr »

LrnByTeach wrote: post #567
lsh123 wrote: post #555

I assume that Copilot uses open source projects on GitHub to “learn” what to suggest. Some of these projects might be under, say, GPL v3. A developer uses Copilot for a commercial project and Copilot insert a complete function from a GPL v3 code into this project. Someone notices this and sues the commercial project for breaking GPL v3. Will GitHub pickup the tab?

a person bought a hammer/knife from a shop and used it to hurt another person. When the victim sues the attacker, can the manufacturer of hammer/knife pick up the tab?

Unless the hammer automatically chooses it's target and will (sometimes) hit a human in the head all on it's own unless the owner is paying sufficient attention to check it's target on each swing and validate that it's not a human head.... not really the same thing.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#595

Post by zarzavat »

Longlius wrote: post #584
blip54321 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damages. This question will come back to damages. If you steal 10 lines of code from me, the damages will be the greater of: - The benefit to you (10 minutes programmer time) - The cost to me ($0) - Statutory damages (probably $200) In other words, it's very unlikely to be worth a lawsuit. The most likely outcome is: - A legal letter is sent - Infringing code is removed - As good bedside manner, some nominal amount o…

Willful copyright infringement for monetary gain can be prosecuted as a criminal act in the United States (and many other countries including Japan) and it's highly possible Github themselves can end up in hot water for facilitating this.

You and I have a different understanding of “willful”. If you’ve used copilot you’ll know that the vast majority of the time it’s not infringing anybody’s copyright, it’s creating code that is highly unique to the problem you are trying to solve.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#596

Post by onelovetwo »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #593

I was wondering what languages they support. With Swift being a protocol first language, most of the 'boiler plate' ends up being handled. I guess it goes to show that Swift is beyond your normal power tool. Here's an example of something that just blew my mind recently, on the front page of CoPilot: Memoization. HackingWithSwift shows how this process gets rocket wings with Swift[0] (skip to the end for the mind mel…

It doesnt seem like hes using copilot...

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#597

Post by popcube »

LrnByTeach wrote: post #567
lsh123 wrote: post #555

I assume that Copilot uses open source projects on GitHub to “learn” what to suggest. Some of these projects might be under, say, GPL v3. A developer uses Copilot for a commercial project and Copilot insert a complete function from a GPL v3 code into this project. Someone notices this and sues the commercial project for breaking GPL v3. Will GitHub pickup the tab?

a person bought a hammer/knife from a shop and used it to hurt another person. When the victim sues the attacker, can the manufacturer of hammer/knife pick up the tab?

we need another AI in example, if someone's AI car automatically random hit people, do not company have some responsibility?

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#598

Post by tamrix »

mcluck wrote: post #382

Like many people I thought Copilot was neat but ended up uninstalling it because it caused more problems than it solved. Reading the comments here, it seems that most of the people who get value out of it would be better served creating a set of snippets. If all you need is to fill in boilerplate all the time or repeat general test structures but with different arguments, just make a snippet. Every major code editor…

In my experience, most of the code snippets weren't useful and testing the less useful code snippets costs more time than it saves.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#599

Post by itsharshag »

[deleted] wrote: post #160
ahnick wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm, yes, that was my original point. What does "one or more of the most popular open source projects on GitHub" mean exactly? Do you need a certain number of github stars on your project? Are you listed on some "most popular github projects specific page"? or what?

[deleted]

Can you please share the link for this FAQ?

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#600

Post by zarzavat »

conradfr wrote: post #566
tedunangst wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think "very smart" programmers would be equipped to do basic cost/benefit analysis. If it costs $900 and provides $1000 in value, that's $100 more than not buying it.

It depends if as a employee, your working time stays the same.

If you’re an employee your company should pay for it. If not, find a better employer!
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