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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#301

Post by ThereIsNoWorry »

lin83 wrote: post #261
teakettle42 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, then there doesn't exist a single reputable company with a tech division and we're all unethical. Have a nice unethical day. I’m deeply disturbed that you think this form of plagiarism is universal — I can assure you that is not the case. I work at a FANG currently, and plagiarism is absolutely not tolerated. In fact, plagiarism has been considered a fireable offense at every other company I’ve worked at over m…

> I’m deeply disturbed that you think this form of plagiarism is universal This thread is an eye opener for me too. Do engineers not get trained on their legal obligations? My company is old and not a tradition tech company but we have been running workshops on the issue for years. Even if they don't, what about their legal teams? Or CI tools to scan for licence violations? Some of the responses here are so naive it'…

Obviously we do. Don't copy paste 10 pages of source code unaltered and sell it as your own.

But that's something entirely different from small code snippets, changed and adapted to solve the same problem a thousand other people already had. Nothing else are developers doing going on GitHub, StackOverflow or any other website to find answers to their questions. That's not naivety, that's how coding works (partially). If you would have to re-invent the wheel everytime you build something new, good luck.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#302

Post by teakettle42 »

kachhalimbu wrote: post #284
shireboy wrote: post #226

I do feel these arguments are valid if a little overstated. Most devs have googled, found some code, and pasted it in without thinking about attribution. Doesn’t make it right, but it is a question of how much code is being copied and how specific. For example, I peruse open repos to learn - I learned about the spread operator in JavaScript that way- doesn’t mean every time I use it I need to attribute whatever repo…

I like this take. Copilot to me seems a glorified (very intelligent) auto-search-paste/autocomplete service. It is just mimicing what usual devs do which is to copy-paste code from StackOverflow/github for many mundane types of codes like for loops, mongo find queries, callback func definitions etc for JS devs for eg. The idea of auto-attribution if copilot surfaces licensed code is best because then it keeps the cop…

> It is just mimicing what usual devs do which is to copy-paste code from StackOverflow/github for many mundane types of codes like for loops, mongo find queries, callback func definitions etc for JS devs for eg.

I’m genuinely disturbed to see how many people in this thread think that casual plagiarism is the norm for “usual devs”.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#303

Post by moffkalast »

coldtea wrote: post #86

> Hector Martin: If you use Copilot, you are basically playing Russian Roulette that the random mashup of existing, copyrighted, hegerogenously licensed code that you get out of it qualifies as an original work, mostly by chance. Or that nobody will ever sue you otherwise. Well, that's already the case with Stack Overflow copypasta enterprise code. If anything, use of Copilot would be an improvement...

> If anything, use of Copilot would be an improvement

What do you mean, Copilot regularly pastes stuff directly from SO. One of those automatic doc generators was able to point me to the exact answer where one of them was from.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#304

Post by stagas »

bmacho wrote: post #72

On a side note, I do believe that short programs or functions should be copyright free by law. Or we as a community need to create a better bsd, a cc0 for everything. Almost everything is nontrivial, and almost everything is copyrighted, at least with the pressure to name the original author (BSD, GPL, other major permissive licenses). Say you want to use a library, then you check for examples in the documentation, n…

What about a law that makes all code available but then requires you to use a portion of your earnings to compensate the people their dependencies you used?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#305

Post by Xunjin »

jacquesm wrote: post #243
csee wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the difference between Co-Pilot on the one hand and Moderna (on the shoulders of medical research) or SpaceX (on the shoulders of physics knowledge and cumulative rocket engineering knowledge) on the other. They all heavily use technology, automation and machines. I don't see where the distinction is coming from, and if there is a technical legal distinction, is it an ethically important one?

The distinction is a legal one: intellectual property can not be re-used without permission of the rights holder, be it a patent or a chunk of source code. And you can bet that SpaceX using physics knowledge and cumulative rocket engineering knowledge are very careful to either license the tech they use or be very explicit about documenting their own. That you can't see the difference is entirely on you, going 'again…

An amazing argument and analogy, also I do agree about Medical research, being possible to patent a work which is publicly funded is an A*** move.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#306

Post by olalonde »

HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

No post body was provided.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#307

Post by redox99 »

wolframhempel wrote: post #272
redox99 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't all stack overflow content creative commons? https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

it is - which is a problem if you want to repackage something under a different license.

But you said

> Every snippet found that wasn't posted with a clear license by the author was challenged and we rewrote it

How is the license not clear?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#308

Post by coldtea »

moffkalast wrote: post #303
coldtea wrote: post #86

> Hector Martin: If you use Copilot, you are basically playing Russian Roulette that the random mashup of existing, copyrighted, hegerogenously licensed code that you get out of it qualifies as an original work, mostly by chance. Or that nobody will ever sue you otherwise. Well, that's already the case with Stack Overflow copypasta enterprise code. If anything, use of Copilot would be an improvement...

> If anything, use of Copilot would be an improvement What do you mean, Copilot regularly pastes stuff directly from SO. One of those automatic doc generators was able to point me to the exact answer where one of them was from.

That it doesn't just "copy and paste" but does more involved "AI" mixing

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#309

Post by jimnotgym »

hansword wrote: post #203
HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

If I enter 'Mickey Mouse' into an ML-TTI thing like Craiyon (Dall E mini) do you think I will be able to sell the resulting image on a Tshirt? No, I won't, because Disney has fancy lawyers, the average open source developer hasn't. What you are saying is: Screw little people, let M$ make their money. Either copyright is for everyone, or for no one. I prefer the latter, but this is not the world we live in.

Isnt this an indictment of the justice system rather than the big firms.

I once heard this quote, "English justice is open to all, in the same way that The Ritz [very expensive hotel] is open to all."

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#310

Post by Yenrabbit »

bborud wrote: post #198

My personal reasons for not using copilot are a bit simpler. I believe the act of researching which solutions to use for a given problem is not so much about time, or the code you end up with, but about developing a better understanding of what you are doing. You may end up just cutting, pasting and modifying a piece of code you found, but hopefully, you were exposed to a few different ways to accomplish the same thi…

At least the way I use it, it's not taking much away from my problem solving. It's just that instead of having to type `particlesGeometry.setAttribute('position', new THREE.BufferAttribute(positions, 3))` I just write `//Add as an attribute` and then hit TAB, since Copilot is smart enough to see that I've just prepared some geometry and populated an array of positions (both operations also sped up by not having to type the obvious bits). You're still having to think through the solutions (I'm not just typing '//make a cool particle sim') but no longer need to hit SO every few minutes for syntax examples when using a new library or something.
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