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GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

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Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#461

Post by bogota »

muzani wrote: post #432
nonasktell wrote: post #301

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…

It says why in the linked post. People aren't doing open source for free; they do it for the community. But Copilot is there to extract value from it, giving nothing back, not even credit.

Like everything in life. Its all about extracting value from someone else who has no control over the exploitation. You only notice when you are the one being exploited though.

As long as some company can improve its bottom line it’s all good though

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#462

Post by ncr100 »

skytrue wrote: post #350

It's always interesting to see the buzz that occurs when Copilot is brought up as a topic. This place is called "HackerNews", yet routinely people forget that a "hacker" is somebody using technology to overcome novel problems. Doesn't GitHub Copilot fall into this category? Why is there such an outcry over a technology that has been in the public's hands for less than a year? I'm almost certain that the team responsi…

That assumes that the open source community is going to be the same in the future...still generating code just to have it frozen, dehumanized and capitalized upon by Copilot:

> Mean­while, we open-source authors have to watch as our work is stashed in a big code library in the sky called Copi­lot. The user feed­back & con­tri­bu­tions we were get­ting? Soon, all gone

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#463

Post by bobmaxup »

HeavyStorm wrote: post #452
muzani wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says why in the linked post. People aren't doing open source for free; they do it for the community. But Copilot is there to extract value from it, giving nothing back, not even credit.

If that's the only issue, I can't see the difference when I search for something on the web, copy the code and paste into my solution. There's no attribution, there's no giving back, nothing. Because I'm the community that you are saying the code is supposed to benefit.

You plagiarize code as a professional?

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#464

Post by RayVR »

elil17 wrote: post #447
bugfix-66 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to use my code, without ever knowing I wrote it? You want to use my hard work, regurgitated anonymously, stripped of all credit, stripped of all attribution, stripped of all identity and ancestry and citation? FUCK YOU! Training must be opt in, not opt out. Every artist, every creative individual, must EXPLICITLY OPT IN to having their hard work regurgitated anonymously by Copilot or Dall-E or whatever. If y…

I just don't understand this at all. I publish my code as open source when I can because I want others to find it useful, either by using the software that I wrote or by reusing the code. If I didn't want that, I wouldn't publish the code. But I do want it, so I'm glad there's a way for people to access it more easily. I understand the argument from an artist's perspective much more, since they don't really have the…

That's great for you. I hope you choose a license and copyright terms that enable this specific vision.

The vast majority of open source licenses and copyright terms specifically stipulate the legal requirements for reproducing even just parts of the code. Which at a minimum require reproducing the license and copyright with all software including the licensed and copyrighted code.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#465

Post by int_19h »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #291

First, the author’s book Beautiful Racket is very cool, recommended. I largely disagree with this article, at least for MIT, BSD, etc. training code examples. The small autocompletions, even if they are several lines long, sort of seems like fair use to me. I do think that CoPilot should have an option to use a smaller model just trained in code that has very liberal use licenses, because I think the use of GPL, etc.…

Sharing is distinct from attribution. Are you okay with your code being reused without attributing it to you? If yes, then why have you published it under licenses that explicitly require such attribution?

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#466

Post by JamesBarney »

egypturnash wrote: post #423

It's hilarious how when I express displeasure about AI image generators looking likely to take a huge bite out of my profession of "artist" and playing extremely fast and loose with fair use, I get told that it's completely inevitable now and I should either retrain as a prompt engineer or go join the buggy whip manufacturers, but now that this is clearly violating programmer copyrights, you folks are starting to get…

I'm a programmer, I don't really feel threatened by Github copilot. If the world can produce code more cheaply, the world becomes a much better place for everyone and a little worse place for developers.

Overall seems like a good trade. (for the world)

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#467

Post by bobmaxup »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #429
mahogany wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Following this line of thought, do you think that all code from all software should be open source and publicly available (and free to copy and use), in the…

> Following this line of thought, do you think that all code from all software should be open source and publicly available Let's help shape this thought: Copyright should be abolished entirely. It is one of many monetization schemes and its negative effects greatly outweigh its positives. We know people won't stop writing software in the absence of copyright. We know they won't stop writing books, singing songs, etc…

> Copyright is not the primary motivator for either science or art

Having a way to own works is probably pretty important to either of those endeavors, right?

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#468

Post by [deleted] »

gjkqfc wrote: post #400
naikrovek wrote: post #377

Here's the thing about GitHub that most people do not realize. I find this funny because of all the talk of following license agreements, very few have taken the time to read the terms of service for GitHub. from their terms of service: "Short version: You own content you create, but you allow us certain rights to it, so that we can display and share the content you post. " emphasis mine. that's what they call the "S…

> but you all were already mad anyway ... This seems to be the line of argumentation agreed upon by several waffling pro-GitHub posters. Many comments have some variation on that diversion from the issue. > GitHub gets their own rights to your code. This is preposterous and false. GitHub has the right to display the entire work, properly attributed and licensed, to others. No new licenses are given, no dual-licensing…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#469

Post by betwixthewires »

naikrovek wrote: post #403
nathanaldensr wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

it's not copyright violation. no one reads... 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.

So this doesn't negate the license. Microsoft cannot just roll the code into windows for example, closed source and proprietary. They have to abide by the license, regardless what their ToS says.

Here's a fun way to see it, suppose someone writes code licensed GPL. I take it, fork it, modify a line in it or not, and also license it GPL because I have to by law. I put it on my github account and what, I now just gave Microsoft rights to the code I don't even have? So by putting it on github I'm violating a license? It doesn't add up. The license to the code is the license to the code, no matter what site it's on and noatter what any ToS says. Otherwise what's to stop me from putting a ToS on my personal website partaining to your use of my eyeballs that says "if your creation becomes viewable by my eyeballs in any way I can use it however I want, publishing your work in such a way that it can be viewed by my eyeballs is consent to this ToS"?

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#470

Post by canibal57 »

HeavyStorm wrote: post #452
muzani wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says why in the linked post. People aren't doing open source for free; they do it for the community. But Copilot is there to extract value from it, giving nothing back, not even credit.

If that's the only issue, I can't see the difference when I search for something on the web, copy the code and paste into my solution. There's no attribution, there's no giving back, nothing. Because I'm the community that you are saying the code is supposed to benefit.

No, you're not. The community reads and respects the attached licensing.
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