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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Fair - that was poorly expressed.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#352

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…

They own their code and it either has a license for use or is implicitly rights retained if not. If Copilot regurgitates their code, from a project that is public but with a non-permissive license they are having their IP rights violated so are totally correct in being unhappy about that. Just because you’ve made something cool doesn’t give you the right to harm others in the process. If MS or OpenAI don’t think this…

In light of this potential new paradigm it's bewildering how people still manage to focus on the license of training material as if it even moved the needle in this context, even a little bit.

OSS knights: THE LICENSE.

MS: Aight, I guess we have a few lines of hq src to help out with…

Github: Same.

Other OSS people: We really don't care one way or the other.

As long as the word of the lincense was upheld for another 2 weeks before it ceased to matter for the rest of all time.

Jesus fucking christ. People. I get that oss licensing is dear to the collective hn heart – but, at best, it's completely irrelevant in regards to where this will inevitably lead, regardless of current questions/issues with license violations. You can (if all the repos of MS and Github are not enough to train this thing on, which is a laughable idea) even fucking buy additional source code if that's what it takes to strengthen Copilots legal foundation. The cost is insignificant. People will be happy to sell for super cheap. It's a non issue.

Why do you wilfully choose to be distracted instead of facing and thinking about the future together?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

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

I'm disturbed it is likely the reality.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#354
Reading many of the comments here I feel like one important thing is being left out that is not related to legal, but to social issues:

Who is on the side of open source? Where are the big, powerful institutions and companies that deeply care about authors and communities providing free software that so many of us rely on?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#355
It'd be nice to see some proof here. Copyright is not absolute and does not extend, for example, to things that have no creativity in them. There are only so many ways to write a for loop or an if condition. Training an ML model from a large body of code IMHO violates copyright no more than any of us reading code and learning from it, as long as GH Copilot doesn't spit out code that's exactly the same as something already existing.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#356

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…

My problem with this conversation is how we can have a 200 comment thread without anyone providing any kind of proof to these claims. Is there any instance of this bot printing an actual copyrighted algorithm instead of a mundane uncopyrighteable piece of logic?

One of the earliest examples was Copilot printing Quake's fast inverse square root verbatim, including swearing in a comment.

Quake's source code is GPL.

There are plenty more if you're willing to look.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#357

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…

Both things can be true. It's clear that it violates the licenses of many software projects. But I do agree that denigrating it as "just selling other peoples code" is missing the whole point of the product and of what you pay for when you subscribe to it.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#358

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…

They own their code and it either has a license for use or is implicitly rights retained if not. If Copilot regurgitates their code, from a project that is public but with a non-permissive license they are having their IP rights violated so are totally correct in being unhappy about that. Just because you’ve made something cool doesn’t give you the right to harm others in the process. If MS or OpenAI don’t think this…

I'm sure the MS lawyers thought long and hard about this and are patiently awaiting any actual lawsuits with confidence in their position. It would be very hard to prove ownership of any snippets. To the point where you can argue that it is just fair use and to the point where companies would think long and hard before committing any resources to fighting MS on this in court at great expense.

I don't think that will happen but it might be interesting if it did.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#359

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.

> 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 — I can assure you that is not the case. > I work at a FANG currently, and plagiarism is absolutely not tolerated.

It's universal in any company that doesn't take measures against it. So basically startups, small, medium, and even some large companies.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agreed. It's just people getting mad and jealous but hear me out. Copilot is NOT SELLING coed other people wrote, it is simply acting as a curator to show you all the solutions people HAVE WRITTEN for free. Copilot does NOT write entire programs, it's simply an assistant. And there is not much copyright you CAN apply to 3-4 lines of generally understandable code. I've used Copilot and am actively paying for and…

Because they _are_ verbatim copying code and not respecting the license. It's not that complicated. Github knows better, can do better and should.

Do you have an example of Github Copilot doing that? Like a snippet of code generated by Copilot and a link to the original source code.
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