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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#601

Post by TAForObvReasons »

sammax wrote: post #596
jaywalk wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your code is using a license that allows it, how could you possibly opt-out aside from using a different license?

Don’t most licenses require at least attribution? I don’t believe GitHub is restricting themselves to only licenses that don’t. In fact the only software licenses I can think of that don’t require attribution are 0BSD, WTFPL, CC0, MIT-0 and Unlicense, and they all aren’t super popular. Also in some countries creators have inalienable moral rights which can be enforced regardless of the license. For example in Germany…

This is an important and overlooked point. Even common permissive licenses (ISC / MIT / Apache-2.0) require attribution

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#602

Post by borishn »

Copilot is fair use, get over it!

Copilot is not writing your code any more that Google search is writing your code. You are writing your code, and Copilot is just making suggestions.

US constitution secures limited copyright to "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". Copilot is just that, get over it!

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#603

Post by Guid_NewGuid »

mplanchard wrote: post #595
Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #569

I find this whole topic very annoying, this is like the 3rd variation to reach the front page today. But it has made me realize why I instinctively dislike Free Software as a movement. Copyright and licensing are bad, actually. Stop getting worked up about the idea of using courts to punish theft. Stop getting into a frenzy of arousal about the police kicking down doors to drag Billy Gates to jail because 80 characte…

If that's what you want, you should license your code not under MIT, but under a license that allows replication/distribution without attribution. Meanwhile, others who do care about such things can license their code under licenses that require attribution/copyleft/etc.

But I can't really because the legal systems for it don't exist. I can't relinquish anything https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1471... (CC0 looks closer but still doesn't do what I'm after).

And I can't because there are a bunch of, for want of a better word, dweebs who care about this stuff. I don't give a single solitary frick about the finer points of MIT vs GPL vs BSD 3 clause vs CC-BY-NC or whatever-the-hell. But y'all are forcing me to care by making the legal frameworks for software ever more strict and confusing.

I take a maximalist view, don't want the code copied, sliced up, re-used in any form whatsoever with no credit? Don't post it on a code sharing site. Like I say in the OP, in my job I obviously have to follow the rules, but on an ideological level I'll ignore them where I can get away with it outside of work.

If you don't want the code to be used, don't post it online,

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#605

Post by Buttons840 »

borishn wrote: post #602

Copilot is fair use, get over it! Copilot is not writing your code any more that Google search is writing your code. You are writing your code, and Copilot is just making suggestions. US constitution secures limited copyright to "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". Copilot is just that, get over it!

A good and well argued opinion made hostile by saying "get over it" twice! Saying "get over it" discourages further discussion. Your comment would be better without it.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#606

Post by citizenkeen »

anamexis wrote: post #546
citizenkeen wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the law should change. Saying "it's illegal but it's good/harmless" is a terrible stance.

Seems like an eminently reasonable stance, and exactly the stance you would take to get the law changed.

Fair. I had read "and the law should not apply" as "so we ignore it", not "so we change it".

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#607

Post by Varqu »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #578
Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #569

I find this whole topic very annoying, this is like the 3rd variation to reach the front page today. But it has made me realize why I instinctively dislike Free Software as a movement. Copyright and licensing are bad, actually. Stop getting worked up about the idea of using courts to punish theft. Stop getting into a frenzy of arousal about the police kicking down doors to drag Billy Gates to jail because 80 characte…

"A commons of knowledge is a public good." Yes but this copilot model takes that, adds value and doesn't itself join the public common good. Instead it takes it, and makes you pay to have it back in another form. If copilot were open source and the model released for the public good, being built of public data (in your scenario) we would have a very different conversation.

People (github in this case) do something to make your life easier so that you can save time for the price of 1 latte per month and you complain?

Software Developers seem to be the most whining profession in the world and I despise this attitude (while being a developer myself)

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#608

Post by cududa »

marpstar wrote: post #597
Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #569

I find this whole topic very annoying, this is like the 3rd variation to reach the front page today. But it has made me realize why I instinctively dislike Free Software as a movement. Copyright and licensing are bad, actually. Stop getting worked up about the idea of using courts to punish theft. Stop getting into a frenzy of arousal about the police kicking down doors to drag Billy Gates to jail because 80 characte…

> Copy my MIT licensed code without attribution? I don't give a shit, go ahead, I hope it helps This is my feeling as well. I don't build stuff in the open so that I can get bent out of shape at someone not properly licensing it. It's in a public repository, FFS... I assume that if anyone even notices my repo, that they may copy/paste a few lines out of my solution if it helps them.

Exactly! Do they really think every single line of their code is so precious it requires attribution? If I publish code, I assume it might get pushed, pulled, refactored in a million ways and no one will ever know my name’s attached to it. And guess what? I DONT’T CARE. It’s code. Not a self-constructed monument to my own intelligence that needs a little placard with my name on it to follow around some clever async function I wrote

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#609

Post by kemiller »

nickjj wrote: post #535

This might be overreacting but is there a way to opt-out of Copilot using your code in open source repos? It feels morally wrong to me that I can spend thousands of hours working on projects on my own free will but then a company can sell the code I wrote to others in the form of snippet completion as a service. In fact they end up selling your code back to yourself if you plan to use the service. If the answer is no…

This is a really good point that I hadn't considered before. It's facebook all over again — selling your own content back to you. Repo owners should be at least compensated when their code gets used. That would be an incredible market.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#610

Post by cududa »

Buttons840 wrote: post #605
borishn wrote: post #602

Copilot is fair use, get over it! Copilot is not writing your code any more that Google search is writing your code. You are writing your code, and Copilot is just making suggestions. US constitution secures limited copyright to "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". Copilot is just that, get over it!

A good and well argued opinion made hostile by saying "get over it" twice! Saying "get over it" discourages further discussion. Your comment would be better without it.

Get over it.
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