GitHub Copilot investigation • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#181

Post by EvanAnderson » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:50 PM UTC

rcoder wrote: post #122

keithnz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why use the API? why not just use git to get the code? All you need the API for is repository discovery

I'm gonna guess that Microsoft GitHub (tm) would shut you down pretty quickly if you tried to clone tens or hundreds of thousands of repos in a short window of time, b/c of course that's sketchy/abusive use of their infrastructure, right? But of course if the data is already sitting in object storage inside your cloud environment and all you have to do is run some MapReduce jobs to get at it... Hence: unfair, anticom…

> I'm gonna guess that Microsoft GitHub (tm) would shut you down pretty quickly if you tried to clone tens or hundreds of thousands of repos in a short window of time, b/c of course that's sketchy/abusive use of their infrastructure, right?

ArchiveTeam has a distributed Github archive project[0]. It's unclear what the status is right now. It seems like a worthwhile idea.

[0] https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/GitHub#Archive_Team_p...

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#182

Post by j2kun » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:50 PM UTC

rockemsockem wrote: post #128

What do people think the future looks like where publicly available resources on the Internet (art, code, etc) aren't fair use for training ML models? Where you have to opt into models or can opt out (and many wind up doing so)? OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, et al will STILL train such models that can do all the same things, but it will be much harder for non-industry-backed individuals to navigate the legal minefield w…

There are plenty of regulations that only apply to companies with more than X employees, etc. What makes you think any way to improve the law would necessarily harm individuals?

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#183

Post by nkrisc » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:50 PM UTC

rockemsockem wrote: post #128

What do people think the future looks like where publicly available resources on the Internet (art, code, etc) aren't fair use for training ML models? Where you have to opt into models or can opt out (and many wind up doing so)? OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, et al will STILL train such models that can do all the same things, but it will be much harder for non-industry-backed individuals to navigate the legal minefield w…

> look I prompted CoPilot for this piece of code that I already knew about and it spit it right out" (that's not how it's going to be used in practice).

So what? I’m not being snarky: does that actually make any difference, legally?

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#184

Post by Tijdreiziger » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #162

gfynt wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they continue that path, the future will be that OpenAI, Microsoft, Google etc. will pay larger and larger fines at least in the EU, until they are blocked entirely.

And the EU will continue to fall farther and farther behind in software development.

If that’s what it takes to uphold EU citizens’ legal and moral rights, so be it. People said the GDPR would hinder business too.

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#185

Post by yarg » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #102

smt88 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot wouldn't be shut down or neutered because "a few vocal people" protested against it. It would be because it's illegal and violates the licenses, desires, and intentions of the thousands of workers who wrote the code in its corpus. You act like Microsoft is trying to do a public service and people are angry about it. The reality is that they're taking billions of hours of work and using it to build a product t…

> It would be because it's illegal and violates the licenses, desires, and intentions of the thousands of workers who wrote the code in its corpus. I wonder how many people on HN would be on the side of the creators if we were talking about content created by Walt Disney and whether pirating was ethical?

It'd probably turn towards Disney's history of bribing congress for copyright extensions whenever the mouse is about to enter the public domain.

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#186

Post by kazinator » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

> Arguably, Microsoft is creating a new walled garden that will inhibit programmers from discovering traditional open-source communities.

This is extremely far fetched.

User bases (let's avoid one of the four dirty C words) are organized around something which builds, executes and is documented, not searches for snippets.

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#187

Post by klllai » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

Andys wrote: post #173

If you're against Copilot as developer, you're shooting yourself in the foot. Locking up code under non-permissive licenses stymies the pace of code development and increases the costs of progress dramatically. We all stand on the shoulders of others before us. Including the organisations that stand to benefit the most from aggressive licensing.

Copy & paste isn't "standing on the shoulders of others". It is more like being an intestinal parasite.

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#188

Post by Plasmoid » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

planetsprite wrote: post #154

rockemsockem wrote: post #128

What do people think the future looks like where publicly available resources on the Internet (art, code, etc) aren't fair use for training ML models? Where you have to opt into models or can opt out (and many wind up doing so)? OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, et al will STILL train such models that can do all the same things, but it will be much harder for non-industry-backed individuals to navigate the legal minefield w…

Any law where the penalty is a fine only exists for the poor. Any regulation where the penalty is in the millions only exists for small businesses.

I guess that's true. If you consider laws to be strictly transactional then you can totally do the crime if you're willing to do the time.

I'm just not convinced by the idea that any penalty less than death isn't a penalty.

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#189

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #179

smt88 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot wouldn't be shut down or neutered because "a few vocal people" protested against it. It would be because it's illegal and violates the licenses, desires, and intentions of the thousands of workers who wrote the code in its corpus. You act like Microsoft is trying to do a public service and people are angry about it. The reality is that they're taking billions of hours of work and using it to build a product t…

> It would be because it's illegal and violates the licenses, desires, and intentions of the thousands of workers who wrote the code in its corpus. Copilot makes source code much more open, if you think about it. It implements code reuse in a different way than classes and libraries. It offers its skills equally to everyone, skills learned from everyone. As for the cost of the API - it's expensive to run large langua…

And if it preserves licenses that's fine. Otherwise it's copyright infringement.

Re: GitHub Copilot investigation

#190

Post by treis » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:55 PM UTC

beachy wrote: post #103

armchairhacker wrote: post #37

One issue I see with Copilot is that they get free access to all open-source data on GitHub, but using GitHub APIs to download the data yourself isn't possible (rate limiting). This is an unfair advantage. Copilot is not only making money off of open-source, they are making money off of open-source in a way others can't. I would love to see a lawsuit which requires GitHub to provide their full Copilot dataset.

Github does plenty of stuff that you can't do. e.g. the contributions graph as just one example that comes to mind. That's not unfair, and not the basis for a lawsuit, it's just business. > Copilot is not only making money off of open-source, they are making money off of open-source in a way others can't. Of course! That's why MS paid squillions to buy Github.

You're not supposed to be able to use dominance in one market (git hosting) to gain dominance in another (AI powered code suggestions).