401–410 of 1001 posts
Kinda like how gmail was reading everyone's emails and showing ads based on them.
What's with the default to "if it's not explicitly legal, it must be illegal"? Imagine if every new piece of software your wrote had to be tested for legality because you don't know that it's explicitly legal. Oh there aren't laws for this new thing, so I guess you should challenge yourself all the way to the supreme court? I get the author not liking Copilot, but I don't see that GitHub/Microsoft have any kind of ob…
Why would anyone want to stop Copilot is beyond me. Reinventing the wheel, millions of time a day, is an atrocity. Millions of (wo)man hours, wasted, every single day, on writing solutions to problems that have already been solved. There is a partial solution to this, and it's making people angry, it's crazy. If you put your code publicly on the internet, you should expect that people will reuse your code at some poi…
You're asking for people to be okay with potential copyright violations and a removal of attribution because of the common need. Like all things, there must be balance. Open source would not exist if the only use of its output was to train ML models that hide where the code comes from. Part of the allure of open source--maybe the biggest allure, honestly--is the community aspect. I get to find friends, contribute phi…
https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...
when you put code on github.com you grant GitHub the right to show that code to others, independent of the license you choose for your code. full stop. doesn't matter if it's on a webpage, a git client, or a github-developed plugin to an IDE.
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…
My 2 cents, 1. I think if you don't want your code re-used in CoPilot you should have that right 2. I think if CoPilot gets smart enough that it can read your open source code and then reproduce the algorithms without copying your code that should be fair use. It's the same thing a human would do. AFAIK CoPilot can not do that but I can certainly imagine it's not too many years away from that. 3. I think I would opt…
The examples where people can show it reproducing snippits of code are more the exception than the rule. And they are usually done by people who are trying to manuliption into proving that it can reproduce copyrighted code.
Some people tend to think of it as a search engine. Looking though it's database for relevant snippets for the current situation and regurgitating them unmodified.
But that's really not what it's doing. It's more like the AI autocomplete on your phone, but for code.
It might not be able to understand the algorithms. But it seems to be able to adapt simple algorithms that it's seen multiple times in it's training data to match the surrounding code (in style, naming conventions, and actually using the variable/functions you already have).
I don't have number, but from my experience, I would say it generates uniqu(ish) non-copyrighted code at least 95% of the time.
The only question is what to do about the other times when it does occasionally output potentially copyright infringing code, either by accident, or when it's forced.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's with the default to "if it's not explicitly legal, it must be illegal"? That's not how I interpret what's happening. People who produce things have rights over their products. Be it artists, craftsmen, inventors, entrepreneurs or coders. There is a legitimate question here as to whether CoPilot has infringed upon those rights. I don't see it being about "making something illegal." I see it about answering a…
A few snippets of code is not a product. If there was an open-source money-making product and someone builds a competing product using considerable help from CoPilot then that is a stronger case for damages then if someone just used some snippets of code in their own product. But at that point, it would be just like someone cloning the Github code without following the license and in that case, it should become obvio…
You cannot sample music without permission no matter how short the sample may be.
Similarly you cannot steal a snippet of someone else's code without permission or the correct licensing.
- MS absolutely has the authority to copy, use, and even train their models on your GPL-license code, because you agreed to let them do that when you signed their EULA when you decided to host your code on GitHub.
- This authority does not extend to CoPilot users, who cannot republish your GPL-licensed code without respecting the license. But remember that people have always had the ability (not authority) to copy and use open source code in violation of the license. This simply makes it embarrassingly easy for a person to do so unknowingly (although, legally, this would probably be considered negligence, not ignorance).
IANAL but I wonder if the extreme facilitation of copyright infringement here could be considered gross negligence on the part of MS, as they're almost entrapping their own customers in a minefield of copyright concerns. Can't wait to find out.
The logical next step in this arms race is for the GPL camp to build tools to automatically search for copyright infringement in large codebases. Copyright holders could set up hotlines for insiders to blow the whistle on infringement in exchange for compensation, since AFAICT all litigation precedent in the US has so far resulted in settlement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
Equal protection under the law. I am 100% on the side of content creators. Regardless of who they are . The courts tend to take a dim view of theft. Which is what this is. The article clearly lays out that multiple requests for sound legal basis have gone unanswered . It simply doesn’t exist and Microsoft is operating on a forgiveness vs permission model. Licensing is 100% about permissions. Clear and explicit enumer…
https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...
so much animosity over rights you gave GitHub when you put your code there. "Theft" gimme a break. you license your code to GitHub so they can show it to others. This is separate to the stated license in your code. Nowhere in that terms of service document are the means that the code is shown to users specified.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suppose you wanted to do what some code does, then you see this LGPL code. What can you do? Adjust variable names and play with line spacing and comments until it feels different?
> Suppose you wanted to do what some code does, then you see this LGPL code. Suppose you want to express what some other writing does, and then you see that writing? What can you do? (You write your ideas in your own words, and quote and cite your sources)
If I want to describe life with a nature metaphor, and then see you do it with a waterfall, I can probably get away with using a waterfall to the same metaphorical effect in my story.
Can I do that in code?
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…
I think it's important to realize the exact implications here: - MS absolutely has the authority to copy, use, and even train their models on your GPL-license code, because you agreed to let them do that when you signed their EULA when you decided to host your code on GitHub. - This authority does not extend to CoPilot users, who cannot republish your GPL-licensed code without respecting the license. But remember tha…
What about GPL code which you don't own, but post to Github, Like the gcc mirror repo?