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GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

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Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#11

Post by sneak »

cercatrova wrote: post #8

Does GitHub not have the right to view and train from your content when you agree to their Terms of Service and upload your code? People are conflating their open source license with the one they give GitHub when making a GitHub account, but they are two entirely separate and parallel licenses. The former is for other people to use your code, the latter is for GitHub to host your code. If you don't like it, you are f…

Not all code on GitHub was uploaded by the copyright holder. The entire linux kernel is on GitHub and at least some of those copyright holders have never explicitly granted a license to GitHub beyond the GPL.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#13

Post by RunSet »

> Microsoft char­ac­ter­izes the out­put of Copi­lot as a series of code "sug­ges­tions". Microsoft "does not claim any rights" in these sug­ges­tions. But nei­ther does Microsoft make any guar­an­tees about the cor­rect­ness, secu­rity, or exten­u­at­ing intel­lec­tual-prop­erty entan­gle­ments of the code so pro­duced. Once you accept a Copi­lot sug­ges­tion, all that becomes your prob­lem:

> "You are respon­si­ble for ensur­ing the secu­rity and qual­ity of your code. We rec­om­mend you take the same pre­cau­tions when using code gen­er­ated by GitHub Copi­lot that you would when using any code you didn’t write your­self. These pre­cau­tions include rig­or­ous test­ing, intel­lec­tual prop­erty scan­ning, and track­ing for secu­rity vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties."

I can't help but recall:

"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."

- Steve Ballmer, while CEO of Microsoft

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#14

Post by SXX »

cercatrova wrote: post #8

Does GitHub not have the right to view and train from your content when you agree to their Terms of Service and upload your code? People are conflating their open source license with the one they give GitHub when making a GitHub account, but they are two entirely separate and parallel licenses. The former is for other people to use your code, the latter is for GitHub to host your code. If you don't like it, you are f…

Code pushed to GitHub is quite often not pushed by actual copyright holders and there no way to distinguish between it even if there was clause like this in GitHub user agreement.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#15

Post by whateveracct »

cercatrova wrote: post #8

Does GitHub not have the right to view and train from your content when you agree to their Terms of Service and upload your code? People are conflating their open source license with the one they give GitHub when making a GitHub account, but they are two entirely separate and parallel licenses. The former is for other people to use your code, the latter is for GitHub to host your code. If you don't like it, you are f…

ToS isn't some all-powerful thing, first of all. A lot of it is unenforceable nonsense. And I'm not sure how it really works with OSS.

For instance, what if I self-host an OSS project but someone puts a mirror on GitHub? Or just uses GH as a remote for their fork? Does that random person accepting the ToS now mean GH has carte blanche to do whatever they want with that IP?

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#18

Post by jen20 »

echelon wrote: post #7

BSD 5-Clause 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software…

The issue with copilot is that it is not respecting clause 1.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#19

Post by wongarsu »

cercatrova wrote: post #8

Does GitHub not have the right to view and train from your content when you agree to their Terms of Service and upload your code? People are conflating their open source license with the one they give GitHub when making a GitHub account, but they are two entirely separate and parallel licenses. The former is for other people to use your code, the latter is for GitHub to host your code. If you don't like it, you are f…

There are quite a few projects that didn't originate on Github. Some are mirrors of projects hosted elsewhere, some accept patches through other means, some include code that predates github. If get your linux kernel patch accepted by emailing it to the responsible maintainer, it will end up on https://github.com/torvalds/linux. But you never agreed to the Github ToS, all you did was agree to publish it under the GPLv2. Linus agreed to the Github ToS, but he can't give away rights he doesn't have, so he can't be giving Github any rights to your patches that go beyond the GPL.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#20

Post by mmastrac »

I think the test for whether an AI is infringing or not should be:

Can this AI regurgitate the vast majority of the creative aspects of an original/novel piece of software with minimal prompting, to the point where the output code looks mostly and directly cloned to a reasonable person trained in the art?

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