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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#791

Post by bayindirh »

ShamelessC wrote: post #781
namose wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But GPL owners aren’t seeking rent, so you’re just asking those who believe all code should be open source to unilaterally let large companies use all their code, while they reap no such benefits from the large companies

Like I said, I understand the premise, just not the emotion behind why you want to release code to the public at all if it isn't simply a donation to all human knowledge. There are better ways to gain notoriety as a coder than by essentially legally requiring your name is attached to a thing for all time. I personally would be thrilled to know my work was valuable enough to be used by a company because I really just…

It's not an emotion. It's a stance.

> Why you want to release code to the public at all if it isn't simply a donation to all human knowledge.

On the contrary. I donate my code to all human knowledge. Just not to corporate's private code corpus. I intend my code to be open to all humans to run, study, modify and share, forever. I don't give you the freedom to take it to a closed domain, and not share the further knowledge you derived from my code. If your primary intention is to return this knowledge to human kind, GPL is an enabler, not an hinderer.

> I personally would be thrilled to know my work was valuable enough to be used by a company because I really just couldn't care less that about the "credit" part of it. I know what I've done and don't have anything to prove.

I personally don't care whether my code is good enough to be used by a company. If I want to contribute code which can be used by a company, I can contribute to MIT projects (which I also do). I don't have anything to prove.

I release my code with the hope it'd be useful for somebody, and I don't want it to be included in any permissive or closed source base. Doesn't matter it saves your beef for today or not. That's not my problem. Go write a better one, then. I don't care.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#792

Post by sirsinsalot »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #763
sirsinsalot wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To allow access to a service that grants you the accumulated knowledge's output in small bits. I'm all for a world where these tools help developers, but i'm not here for a system that isn't open. I want to own my tools. Copilot is a bit like musicians paying a monthly fee for access to a loop library. Except all the loops are rip-offs of other peoples hard work and there's no effort to compensate them. If I made an…

"Except all the loops are rip-offs of other peoples hard work and there's no effort to compensate them." Except all the loops are smaller pieces of larger loops which you as the developer than mix together in new ways to create your application. FTFY.

Even if the sample was one snare hit. Someone worked hard to tune that snare, mic it, record it and process that sound.

They should be compensated.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#793

Post by imtringued »

ShamelessC wrote: post #755
bayindirh wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because copilot is violating the terms I put for my code. My code is GPL. It cannot be put into projects with incompatible licenses. That’s my code, and I share it with strings attached. You can’t just copy my code and sell to other parties no strings attached. If that’s fine and dandy, Microsoft should also train Copilot on their source code repositories, so we can use that knowledge, too.

I guess I've just never had to work with GPL code before, but the complaints essentially only seem to be coming from coders who like this style of open source where you still get to make it kind of a pain in the ass to actually use your software. I guess you have the right to do this, but it doesn't mesh at all with why I personally contribute (without any expectation of attribution), which is that (much like stack o…

>from coders who like this style of open source where you still get to make it kind of a pain in the ass to actually use your software.

Most "coders" don't publish anything if they don't have to. Using proprietary code is an even worse pain in the ass because you don't have access to it.

The point of the GPL is to force people to share their code.

>which is that (much like stack overflow), programmers mostly agreed awhile ago that it's just easier if we all share.

>So much of what's wrong with the modern economy comes down to seeking rent on an idea that should just be public knowledge.

The entire point of the GPL is to force e.g. hardware vendors to share their driver code under the GPL or any other opensource license to be included in the Linux kernel.

>Times are changing - maybe don't share code anymore?

The entire point of the GPL is to force people to share their code.

> I imagine in ten-twenty years this whole conversation will seem pretty petty though when your entire program is trivially recreated from its GitHub description without ever needing to have seen it in the first place.

What the hell are you talking about? If that is the case then why did humans ever bother with extensively documenting and testing their software if three sentences are enough to encode it? Your perspective is particularly annoying because copilot isn't learning to write its own code, it's entirely reliant on an army of unpaid software engineers publishing code on the internet. If it knows how to recreate a project from just the GitHub description it basically just had the codebase inside its model to begin with and merely pretend that it did everything on its own. That is actually a form of rent seeking.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#794

Post by account42 »

selcuka wrote: post #745
kemiller wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> That would be an incredible market I for one welcome our new CEO (Copilot Engine Optimization) overlords. Jokes aside that will likely cause GitHub to be filled with lots of low quality repos (even AI generated, oh the irony!), to trick Copilot into using their code.

> Jokes aside that will likely cause GitHub to be filled with lots of low quality repos

Hasn't this already been the case since GitHub became a CV boost.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#795

Post by account42 »

gopiandcode wrote: post #772
ellyagg wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I hope your viewpoint doesn't win the day, because making code as freely shareable and remixable as possible is a huge boon for humanity.

I feel like you're missing the forest for the trees here - making code freely shareable and remixable is exactly the purpose of GPL and other free-software licenses, but you can bet that the proprietary codebases Copilot will be used in will go out of their way to prevent any such uses of _their_ particular code snippets. IMO, the only way to use Copilot's output in an ethically sound way is to only use the output it…

> IMO, the only way to use Copilot's output in an ethically sound way is to only use the output it produces in AGPL licensed projects

Even then, that is missing attribution which should really be the default for all code reuse and derivation even when you legally are allowed to omit it.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#796

Post by imtringued »

rcxdude wrote: post #737
Kbelicius wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think at its root the problem is copyleft is a mirror image of copyright. That is the (only)point of copyleft. If it weren't for copyright it wouldn't exist. Fight fire with fire, that sort of thing.

I don't think that's true: copyleft is right to repair for software. Even if the software is not copyrightable without the source code users are still relatively powerless. (Incidentally this is related to why patents were created: not to constrain or encourage innovation, but to get people to publish inventions instead of keeping them secret). If copyright were abolished and so too copyleft destroyed, linux users fr…

Copyleft is formalized code sharing. Pretty much an excuse to tell people to share their code.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#797

Post by imtringued »

gopiandcode wrote: post #773
bayindirh wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find this whole topic very annoying, this is like the 3rd variation to reach the front page today. Me too. I also find three iterations of the same subject not enough discourse. We need to take this matter more seriously. > But it has made me realize why I instinctively dislike Free Software as a movement. On the other hand, this whole discourse reminds me why I absolutely love Free Software as a movement. > Copy…

> > Copyright and licensing are bad, actually. > This is why we have "Copyleft". This. Exactly. It's suprising how many developers have strong anti-copyleft/anti-GPL opinions while being completely uninformed on what they're talking about (but hey, I guess "uninformed but strongly opinionated" is HN in a nutshell). The purpose of GPL and other copyleft licenses is exactly to combat the insanity of intellectual slaver…

Pretty much, copyleft is turning copyright against itself.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#798

Post by account42 »

dougmwne wrote: post #726
LordDragonfang wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot replaces code monkeys, not engineers. Ultimately it's just faster stack overflow, proper software engineers and system architects are going to be just as in demand as they are right now for the foreseeable future. At the point at which that stops being the case, we'll have much bigger societal and existential problems (because it implies the singularity is nigh) (You're correct on not being part of the capita…

There are a lot of code monkeys out there and I might be one of them. That island of job security seems like it will be shrinking.

I don't agree that we are that close to that (or that Copilot is a significant contribution to bringing it closer) but ultimately eliminating mindless jobs is a good thing. The problem only comes from the expectation built into our current society that people need a job in order to be allowed to survive. Or to put it another way, the profit from automating away jobs en masse should be shared with the whole of society, not privatized.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#799

Post by [deleted] »

williamcotton wrote: post #787
imtringued wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You are free to reverse engineer any non patented object and reproduce an almost identical object. Prior art for copyright is meaningless unless it is about authorship. You can still do a clean room implementation and ignore prior art.

But the current interpretation is that you cannot claim authorship over things that were already in the public domain. Feel free to read the case notes and follow some of the links in there for more info. Am I not interpreting the court rulings correctly? —— Considering de novo the evidence before the district court, we hold that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment. Johannsongs failed to offer…

[deleted]

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#800

Post by imtringued »

Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #631
wcoenen wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want a truly public domain license I think this sentence contradicts itself. A "license" implies that there is a copyright holder who allows usage of the work under the terms of said license. While "Public domain" implies that there is no copyright holder (e.g. because the copyright expired, was explicitly waived, or is for some other reason not applicable). If you want to put your work in the public domain, you…

You're right that it does contradict itself, but the unfortunate situation is that public domain declarations don't work and would make it harder for people to use your code safely in the current licensing model. The closest options are Unlicense and CC0 afaict and both don't work in many European jurisdictions. I just want people to be able to take my code and do whatever the hell they want with it (including commer…

You use GPL for desktop apps, AGPL for webapps and services and LGPL for libraries. Who cares about the specific version, just pick one of them.
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