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Give up GitHub: The time has come

sfconservancy.org

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Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#401

Post by biztos »

natefinch wrote: post #382
biztos wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their code is so special that no one else could have ever come up with it independently I'm worried about exactly the opposite: having Copilot help me write code that seems quite generic to me, but which in fact makes my code subject to a license I don't even know about, and/or simply violates copyright. For an open-source project this could be embarrassing but probably fixable. It gets more complicated if FAANG is…

There's a setting on GitHub that blocks any suggestions that exactly match code in the training set. I doubt you'd ever get in trouble for code that was similar in structure but different variables etc from existing licensed code (especially since most small snippets of code are not terribly unique to begin with).

AFAIK that's not enough, for instance see the long-standing industry practice that people working on the Important Stuff are not allowed to ever look at the source code of the Direct Competitor; or clean-room reverse engineering, etc.

I guess time will tell how much acquiring companies (my worry) care about Copilot. Given the difficulty hiring good devs, and the productivity level of body-shop devs, I see it getting a whole lot of use very soon, acknowledged or not.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#402

Post by TkTech »

AndyKelley wrote: post #399

Dear SFConservancy, You need to pay more attention to GitHub Sponsors. Not sure how you could write this article and then not even mention it. You're asking people to walk away from a giant pile of money without even addressing it?

I'll continue to use GitHub pro for the next year, at least, simply because GitHub just sent me $720CAD through GitHub sponsors. The self-host movement is important, and I self host a lot of things (including gitea), but it still costs you time, especially when you have to deal with external users (like reputable email servers for gitea invites). If staying on GitHub is painless and _makes me money_, why would I switch?

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#403

Post by jamiek88 »

ordiel wrote: post #356
westoncb wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has also been that Windows 11 is buggy (haven't been using it for a while because it can't even reliably connect to the internet). But also in my limited experience (just one install on a single machine in ~2020, used for a few months): Ubuntu is just as bad or even worse.

Your experience its quite limited and you probably need to know how to properly update ubuntu since most of the issues I've found with it (since I started using it ~12 years ago) are usually issues caused by lack of drivers (which gets solved in 15 minutes once you know where to click) once those are solved it is sturdy and you can keep it runing for several months without having to restart it or it becoming unusably…

Ah the old ‘you are holding it wrong’ of linux.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#404

Post by skjoldr »

natefinch wrote: post #382
biztos wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their code is so special that no one else could have ever come up with it independently I'm worried about exactly the opposite: having Copilot help me write code that seems quite generic to me, but which in fact makes my code subject to a license I don't even know about, and/or simply violates copyright. For an open-source project this could be embarrassing but probably fixable. It gets more complicated if FAANG is…

There's a setting on GitHub that blocks any suggestions that exactly match code in the training set. I doubt you'd ever get in trouble for code that was similar in structure but different variables etc from existing licensed code (especially since most small snippets of code are not terribly unique to begin with).

Then Microsoft should write this as a legal statement on their part that they will take responsibility for. But I doubt they will ever do that.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#405

Post by blooalien »

ShamelessC wrote: post #294
inetknght wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They make money from Co-Pilot? Great! OK let me take your projects and make money from them and not give you anything in return, not even credit. > They sell software to ICE? Good. Why wouldn’t they? I’m not interested in anti-immigration-enforcement politics. ICE policies aside, you should be interested in immigration politics because they're important to people and businesses. Apathy is a bad thing here. > They’r…

> OK let me take your projects and make money from them and not give you anything in return, not even credit. This is one hundred percent okay with me and many other open source contributors. It's a no-strings-attached donation to mankind, and if someone else finds value in it, you don't complain, you cheer. Who needs attribution when people are actually _using_ something you made; you saved someone a good deal of ti…

And if that's your goal, then you release your code under one of the more permissive licenses (MIT, CC0, etc). As the developer and copyright holder, that's totally your right and privilege, and that's how you exercise it. When your license explicitly states that there's terms of use attached, then copyright law ensures that violation of those terms invalidate your rights to use the code. If we're gonna say that copyright law doesn't apply to open source licenses then we have to go ahead and in all fairness state that copyright law no longer applies to proprietary software licenses either, because it's the same laws that protect both. Making something open source doesn't mean you're just giving people the right to do anything they please with the code unless you explicitly state that you're doing so by choosing a properly permissive license for your code.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#407

Post by chlorion »

naikrovek wrote: post #320
josephcsible wrote: post #122

> If it is, as you claim, permissible to train the model (and allow users to generate code based on that model) on any code whatsoever and not be bound by any licensing terms, why did you choose to only train Copilot's model on FOSS? For example, why are your Microsoft Windows and Office codebases not in your training set? This is my favorite question about Copilot ever.

I want to know what stuff you guys are putting in public GitHub FOSS repos that you don't want replicated in any way... I also want to know why people think their code is so special that no one else could have ever come up with it independently. Each and every opponent of Copilot is the best developer ever, I guess? That said, I don't understand the choice to use GPL for any reason, so maybe I'm not equipped to under…

>I want to know what stuff you guys are putting in public GitHub FOSS repos that you don't want replicated in any way...

Nobody has claimed that they want this. People just want derived work to adhere to the license they chose for their project.

>I also want to know why people think their code is so special that no one else could have ever come up with it independently. Each and every opponent of Copilot is the best developer ever, I guess?

Would you feel the same way about ripping off game assets, or music?

I think you just have an axe to grind with free software in general based on your messages and the general tone. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that the ideas are invalid.

I am also curious why copyright laws should protect proprietary software, music, games, writing, etc but not apply to my software, even if it isn't the highest quality work?

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#408

Post by grayclhn »

natefinch wrote: post #382
biztos wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their code is so special that no one else could have ever come up with it independently I'm worried about exactly the opposite: having Copilot help me write code that seems quite generic to me, but which in fact makes my code subject to a license I don't even know about, and/or simply violates copyright. For an open-source project this could be embarrassing but probably fixable. It gets more complicated if FAANG is…

There's a setting on GitHub that blocks any suggestions that exactly match code in the training set. I doubt you'd ever get in trouble for code that was similar in structure but different variables etc from existing licensed code (especially since most small snippets of code are not terribly unique to begin with).

I mean, it's nice that they have a setting for the bare minimum a lazy undergrad would do to avoid getting caught for plagarism — replace some of the words in the copied paragraph with replacements from a thesaurus. It's not something I'd personally expect to hold up under real scrutiny though.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#409

Post by skjoldr »

zvr wrote: post #349
seadan83 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like Github needs to index the license of where it obtained code, and check the license of a project using co-pilot so that it only suggests GPLv3 code for compatible projects. I'm not sure that it is really enough, enforcement is tough, it could be like one of those "are you 18" checkboxes. I get the impression that this article and it's reaction is largely a lot of people wanting to cry big brother and mo…

I think the article starts from the position "everyone should respect the software license" and obviously promoting the SFC views. You are correct that the problem is hard, because adding licensing info to training data and subsequently use it is something not yet accomplished by anyone (who at least has spoken publicly about it). It might be the only way out would be to have different training sets according to lice…

Microsoft could afford to train several models for every significant class of licenses. So if you don't want the model which included e.g. GPL code in its training set, you would opt for the model that was trained on the dataset which didn't include any. It's a bit of a hassle for MS, but that would partially resolve this issue.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#410

Post by WalterBright »

bombcar wrote: post #350
WalterBright wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The D language uses the Boost license because it is the least restrictive. Anyone is free to use it in closed-source non-free commercial apps if they like, or Open Source if they like.

How is Boost different from something like 0-clause BSD?

I don't know what 0-clause BSD is. The Boost license is:

Boost Software License - Version 1.0 - August 17th, 2003

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization obtaining a copy of the software and accompanying documentation covered by this license (the "Software") to use, reproduce, display, distribute, execute, and transmit the Software, and to prepare derivative works of the Software, and to permit third-parties to whom the Software is furnished to do so, all subject to the following:

The copyright notices in the Software and this entire statement, including the above license grant, this restriction and the following disclaimer, must be included in all copies of the Software, in whole or in part, and all derivative works of the Software, unless such copies or derivative works are solely in the form of machine-executable object code generated by a source language processor.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR ANYONE DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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