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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#421

Post by tiborsaas »

moffkalast wrote: post #368
tiborsaas wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it customizes the snippets to your context, the code is synthesized and not looked up in a db like a web search engine.

But it kind of is when you think about it. Network weights are just a db written in an incomprehensible format and the synthesis part is searching and converting it back to readable data. Even if it changes the var names and formatting a bit, it's still at best highly derivative. And at worst it spits out the exact code verbatim.

> Network weights are just a db written in an incomprehensible format

That makes all the difference IMHO, its complexity makes it much more than "just a DB". The synthesis part takes into account the context also, so it does intelligent things automatically, a smart SQL query does not.

My brain also works kinda like this. My knowledge is encoded in an incomprehensible format and I convert my knowledge into code based on the problem at hand.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#422

Post by ricardoplouis »

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…

Wouldn't you rather have a healthy dose of skepticism and pessimism surrounding new inventions? Even if the negativity is off base, it's far more preferable to a world where everyone is always positive and praises what geniuses the creators are. The former atleast breeds discourse while the latter only serves to make people feel good.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#423

Post by gumby »

lupire wrote: post #384
gumby wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get paid to write code having learned from writing code for others and from reading code others wrote. In this regard I dont see why github copilot is any different.

People don't memorize chunks of code and copy it.

People often do write things because they learned a common approach at a previous job or because they saw such an approach when reading someone else’s code. People are often hired specifically because they have experience in a certain area from a previous employer, so are dointhe same sort of thing at a higher level.

We fought this battle over a couple of decades with remix culture (“you stole that line/beat out of my song!”) and the world is better because the over-clingers lost.

There is no shortage of reasons not to like copilot, but I don’t consider this one of them.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#424

Post by regularfry »

barthvr wrote: post #328
Timwi wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convenient, isn't it? As a consumer, it's quite obvious to me too how it benefits only the writer/creator at the detriment of everyone else.

Because writing a book, shooting a movie, composing a song, takes time ? So either those pieces are IP-protected, and their author can make money with it, or we have to set up a basic income for everyone, and art becomes free.

It's perfectly consistent to say both that there needs to be a system to ensure creators are compensated and that the current system for doing so is terrible.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#425

Post by jcelerier »

jimnotgym wrote: post #295
meheleventyone wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this fair use? I don't think that's been established yet. And if it is why didn't MS and OpenAI train it on their private code repositories? Fair use for thee not for me isn't very in keeping with the spirit of that claim.

I sometimes read people's open source code on github and use the ideas from that to develop my own ideas. In fact sometimes I copy and paste short passages and then rework them. I also employ a team of people who may do the same. Is that fair use, yes of course it is. Is co-pilot automating that fair use, I would say so.

What you are doing is very certainly illegal

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#426

Post by bayindirh »

sidlls wrote: post #407
bayindirh wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's under a copyleft license, I can't just copy & paste it under my non-copyleft licensed code and call it mine. That's as simple as that.

It can’t be that simple. The function in the GP is not an original idea and is far too simple to merit protection just by slapping a license on it.

I don't expect, or support, licensing that small amount of code, and suing everyone to oblivion.

The point I'm trying to make is if something is under a copyleft license, you can't copy and paste it verbatim to something non-copyleft. It's what the license says.

Also, to be pedantic, the function I'm commenting on is pure maths, and you can't license/patent mathematics.

On the other hand, if there's some magic sauce of doing something, let it be 25 lines, what will you say? It's just 25 lines, so you can't license it? To be more pedantic, I actually have an algorithm, which is around 25 lines and does something novel. I've published a paper on it.

If I license the reference implementation with AGPLv3+, and you use it and close it, and if I can't go after you, what's the purpose of the license?

You can read the paper and try to implement it. It's free in that regard.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#427

Post by 542458 »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #364

It is now proven that copilot returns code from codebases with non-permissive licenses [1]. I'm curious - what are the legal implications of this going forward? I've so many questions. 1. Will Microsoft ever face lawsuits for these license violations? 2. If so, who/how? Class-action? 3. Will copilot be forced to open-source in the future? Under which license? Some open source licenses are incompatible with others, bu…

IANAL. My understanding is that the general legal precedent in the US is that a) datamining text has no copyright implications (in the same way that reading a book has no copyright implications) and b) it is not a copyright violation to use a small amount of copyrighted material provided the context is sufficiently transformative. This might seem silly or unfair to you, but that is the current legal reality.

But even ignoring that, everybody uploading code to GitHub has given GitHub the right to analyze that code as per the GitHub ToS. This is the same mechanism by which you can't upload code to GitHub with a license that says "nobody is allowed to display this code on the internet" and then sue GitHub.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#428

Post by rictic »

Copilot very rarely copies code verbatum, and when it does it's very short snippets. When Oracle sued Google over allegedly copying short and fairly trivial snippets of code they were justly derided.

I can't speak to the legal side, but I just don't understand the moral outrage over very occasionally copying such short snippets of code. The key innovations and the actual value that licenses are intended to protect aren't in these short snippets.

And what does copilot bring to the community? Free use by students, free use by open source maintainers, and a huge boost in productivity for a modest fee for professional devs, for a service that no doubt costs a lot to run, even on the margin.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#429

Post by mroche »

gjadi wrote: post #336
samatman wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in fact impossible . All they could do is filter by the LICENSE file in the repo. Unfortunately for them, by law copyright and license are determined by the authors and merely represented by a LICENSE file, which could be lying about both. The court isn't going to accept that excuse when this goes to trial.

And you can have multiple licenses in the same repository, folders with copyright exceptions, etc. It's hard enough for us human to find our way in this mess, I've little hope for an AI. But maybe it's just the first step. The final step being able to sell an AI that understands Copyright management. I'm sure there is a big market for that.

I feel like a few guidelines and standards could help simplify a baseline process:

1) Require each repository to opt-in to be learned from.

2) Require any source file used for learning to have an SPDX license heading.

3) Have a list of approved permissive licenses to avoid any proprietary or copyleft arguments.

Using SPDX headings as the explicit guide would solve the problem of different code content using a different license within a project. An example being QtWayland: the client pieces are Proprietary/LGPL/GPL, whereas the compositor parts are Proprietary/GPL. That's not something you'd know from the license files at the root of the project (and post-6.3 they use SPDX instead of the prior license template heading).

Granted, this doesn't solve the problem of the chain of trust (is the individual publishing the code truly the copyright owner), but I think it would be a basic start for a program like this. The opt-in nature would make things... difficult, but I think that's a fair trade-off for something like this.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#430

Post by HumanReadable »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #327
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…

I also disagree with the tone of that tweet, but your dismissal is equally shallow and gear-grinding. There are real, serious, and genuinely interesting issues to be discussed regarding Copilot. It is neither "just selling code that other people wrote", nor is it something that we should applaud merely because it demonstrates "human ingenuity". The comments here regarding this are honestly a total dumpster fire. It's…

Fair enough, I agree.

I actually didn't intend for my comment to be an argument in favour or against, and I am a bit surprised it is the most upvoted of the section.

I agree that there's a pretty interesting discussion to fair-use and the limits of copyright, and that my original comment was not conducive to having that discussion. In my defense, neither was the tweet this thread is about!

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