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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#431

Post by Aeolun »

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…

> Also, they should totally pay back a portion of revenue to the community and support the repos used to train.

Aren’t they already doubling all Github sponsorship money?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#432

Post by mistercow »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #399
mistercow wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can give you an example of an entire (well, I still consider it alpha) library I wrote several months ago, using Copilot: https://github.com/osuushi/triangulate This is an implementation of a 1991 paper on polygon triangulation into Go. So the deepest thinking about how to solve the problem was obviously already done for me, but there were a number of edge cases that I had to invent my own solutions to, and the tra…

When I find myself writing comments of this style I see, I usually ask myself if this thing would be better extracted into a function. These comments are primarily stating the obvious. If I find myself writing a 200 line function with nested or repetitive loops I expect to hear from colleagues about how I should refactor it. I feel that the solution to writing boring, repetitive boilerplate shouldn’t be to automate w…

This reply feels pretty bad-faith. But you know, feel free to open a PR if you have something concrete you feel can be improved.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#433

Post by rurban »

zarzavat wrote: post #324
Hamuko wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about us that are not Americans?

Then you need to check the laws in your country. But that is nothing new to copilot. Copyright laws vary significantly from country to country.

Not really. They are mostly the same across countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_copyright_treati...

There are just minor deviances, not relevant to this case, such as how long Disney bullied the countries to protect a work.

Software is usually considered a work. The AI needs to know if has permissions to copy and use the code, and then offer derived work on the proper terms and conditions. copilot doesn't do that. It might copy GPL code into non-GPL code, thus violating the GPL license, thus being an extreme risk.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#434

Post by [deleted] »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #366
ThereIsNoWorry wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, rearranging conditionals or loops or variables then, problem solved. You cannot 1:1 copy paste anyway. That never works. You always have to adapt it to your particularity. So it's "reworded" by default. And CoPilot is doing nothing else. It's not just 1:1 memorising code, it's a tiny bit smarter than that. I strongly believe you're not a developer. Point taken. I understand your considerations. You should write c…

I absolutely attribute things I find on SO to where I found them. You finished college maybe a year ago and are already making some absolute judgments about what makes other people qualified to call themselves developers simply because they don’t develop as you do.

[deleted]

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#435

Post by grayfaced »

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.

Or alternately, "I sometimes listen to other people's songs and use those ideas to develop my own. In fact sometimes I copy and paste short melodies and then rework them."

Courts have held that it doesn't apply to music, why do you think different rules apply to code?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#436

Post by happymellon »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #152
happymellon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a lot of this code would be put into closed source software, which is against the licence and would prevent people from exercising the right to study how a program works.

But I don't care if closed source programmers read my GPL code! The freedom to learn is not copyleft. So long as they put independent effort into their work, they're good in my book. Shared knowledge is a vital commons, and I'm honored if I can contribute to it. Maybe this goes back to that debunked paper that claimed that transformers were only remixing input samples?

They aren't reading your code. This is a program copy/pasting code without attribution.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#437

Post by redox99 »

teakettle42 wrote: post #379
redox99 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plagiarism being unethical is just my opinion? What constitutes as plagiarism and what doesn't, outside of what the law says, yes. > Does a simple 2-ary function call of a well-defined API qualify as “taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.”? So you agree that taking some code verbatim from SO is not plagiarism then? What about this, would copy pasting this verbatim be plagiarism? htt…

> What constitutes as plagiarism and what doesn't, outside of what the law says, yes. It’s pretty clear what it is. The definition of plagiarism hasn’t changed since you were in grade school and were taught not to copy sentences into your papers. If you still don’t understand what plagiarism is now, yours is a willful ignorance that doesn’t excuse unethical behavior. > What about this, would copy pasting this verbati…

You're basically just repeating that your opinion is the right opinion.

I don't agree that such example is plagiarism and I'm sure a lot of people also would disagree that that's plagiarism.

> You should use the example to understand the underlying problem, at which point you will be well-equipped to write your own one-liner.

> If you can’t write it using your own understanding of the problem, you’re not an adequate programmer and need to improve your skill-set … which won’t happen if you just keep plagiarizing code you don’t understand.

Who says you can't write it by your own, or you don't understand it? Stack overflow and tools such as copilot are often about saving time, not that you would be unable to figure it out by yourself.

And besides that, the point of those examples is that a lot of people without searching for those stack overflow posts, would type that exact same code character by character.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#438

Post by Aeolun »

teakettle42 wrote: post #302
kachhalimbu wrote: post #284

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”.

Dunno what devs you work with, but I’ve someone care literally never.

None of the code I work on is public, so attribution is pointless in the first place.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#439

Post by aetherspawn »

Copilot is a fancy pattern bot.

Humans make original patterns, but since Copilot cannot think, then Copilot does not. It squashes together a bunch of small individual patterns, each under their own license, but at no stage does it do anything more than pick a line from here, and a line from there.

It doesn’t think, and it doesn’t create new IP.

It is like making a picture out of small snippets of a thousand other pictures, and then selling it.. clearly not OK. You still ripped off the original artists.

Or like plagiarising 100 of your class mates’ assignments. Are you less guilty because you went to the effort to steal just a few sentences from each?

A criminal who steals a cent from every account at the bank is a more sophisticated thief than someone who holds up a petrol servo.

If Copilot doesn’t create new IP (it doesn’t; we established this), then it uses existing IP. And in that case it is no different to any of the three analogies above.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#440

Post by cupofpython »

drexlspivey wrote: post #382
meheleventyone wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Owning code snippets sounds ridiculous to me, like can I own this snippet? def average(*numbers): return sum(numbers)/len(numbers) if not is it because it is too small? what’s the minimum line number that ownership kicks into? what if I change the function name and the variable names?

if you write it yourself, it's fine. if you directly copy it from somewhere you arent allowed to copy from, then it is wrong.

There are no rules about the form of the code itself that governs whether or not someone owns it. Common sense applies. Sure you could "steal" very small, common, code snippets and get away with it; but that doesnt make it less wrong.

When a commercial entity explicitly does it, however, some times we can catch them. Like if they do it through algorithms that we more or less know how they work - i.e. the algorithm is using advanced control flow logic to copy and paste from it's training data set and copyrighted material is in that data set

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