GitHub Copilot is generally available

I've found that even in the specialist domains I'm working in, it does pretty well. The caveats being that you need to guide it quite a bit, but once a workflow starts to come together then it really starts to hum.

> Are you suggesting we can use OSS and not follow the terms required by its license?

"can" is a complex question. You can do anything you want, but actions have consequences. I can buy a gun and shoot someone. The consequence is that I might spend the rest of my life in prison. I can fart in a crowded elevator. The consequence is that people will look at me funny, and might dislike me.

Consequences should be proportional to the action.

If farting in an elevator lead to life in prison, or if shooting someone led to people looking at me funny, things wouldn't work very well.

> If not, then you do have to license your entire work under GPL if you incorporate GPL code and distribute it.

No. This is not a proportional consequence. If a random developer incorporates 10 lines of GPL code into Windows, Microsoft doesn't need to license Windows under the AGPL. That's not how our legal system is set up.

Microsoft has to remove the code and pay damages.

> If yes, what kind of environment do you think you're promoting? Is it positive for the development of the industry, and to society in general?

The logic you're suggesting -- is not only incorrect -- but would lead to an environment where people have an irrational fear of "viral" licenses. They're intentionally not viral. They don't infect code. Releasing your code is one option for remedy, but not one the GPL author can force. The FSF went over backwards to design the license like that.

Damages and removing code is an appropriate consequence. It's adequate to prevent most license violations, and still not overly draconian. I don't know of any business which has gone under due to an error around the GPL. That's as it should be. If the GPL were business-toxic, it wouldn't set up a successful ecosystem.

Think of it: If Nevada gave the death penalty for littering, would you liter less? Or simply never, ever, ever travel to Nevada?

In this case, I don't know of a reasonable remedy. I don't want to shut down copilot, but I do feel bad about having my code stolen from me. Perpetual license for everyone whose code was used to develop co-pilot? A nominal stock grant in Open AI? I dunno. When I've seen class action lawsuits, those are the sorts of places things usually land. Indeed, it's usually just short of being fair.

After a few more leading attempts, I managed to give this prompt at https://beta.openai.com/playground:

     What problem does the following pseudocode have?

     def some_worker
             if disabled_via_feature_flag
                  logger.info("skipping some_worker")
             some_potentially_hazardous_method_call()

And receive this response:

     The problem with this pseudocode is that there is no "end" keyword to close off the "if" statement. This means that the code after " some_potentially_hazardous_method_call()" will always be executed, even if the "disabled_via_feature_flag" condition is true.

And that's with a GPT3 without any special fine tuning. Of course, the name `some_potentially_hazardous_method_call` is pretty leading in itself. I rewrote the prompt slightly more realistically, as:

     What problem does the following code have?

     def optionally_do_work():
             if disabling_flag:
                  logger.info("skipping the work due to flag")
             do_work()

and received:

     The problem is that the code will still try to do the work, even if the flag is set.

This does seem like a pretty trivial easier-than-fizzbuzz question to be asking, though, since it's so encapsulated.