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GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

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Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#941

Post by [deleted] »

toastal wrote: post #776
xxs wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, all my code open source is in public domain (CC0). SO it's a free game. However taking any other code without any regard to license,or author's permissions, is unethical and undesirable. At the very least add a comment in the generated snipped where the code originates from. That won't suffice in all cases but it's disingenuous to profit from others' work without any credit/permission.

Fedora no longer accepts the CC0 license for code. If it's public domain code , you should be using 0BSD.

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#943

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

rafaelero wrote: post #274
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a useful tool doesn't make it legal.

Technical progress takes precedence over pitiful intelectual property discussions. If you don't believe that, I am not sure what you are doing in a community like this.

> Technical progress takes precedence over pitiful intelectual property discussions.

Let's pretend for a moment that your value judgement is reasonable and the advancement of technology should reign supreme over minor things like rule of law. Do you really think that letting people ignore copyright is always good for technical progress? Say, letting people use GPL code in proprietary code that they then refuse to share with others? Because that sounds questionable even if we agree with your casual disregard for the law.

> If you don't believe that, I am not sure what you are doing in a community like this.

Being interested in tech without being a fan of breaking the law and running roughshod over other people's work.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#944

Post by rhelsing »

schoen wrote: post #486

Here are a few thoughts I haven't formulated before: It seems clear enough to me that training AIs on copyrighted works is typically or commonly a fair use under existing law, because the AIs can and commonly do learn non-copyrightable elements and aspects of those works. It's very obvious from enormous numbers of examples that current AI systems are capable of learning much more abstract features of human culture (g…

I think the problem is that a powerful entity is profiting off of other people's work without their consent and gives nothing to the exploited members in return. Sure, an individual human learns from copyrighted works and reincorporates to make something slightly new all the time. And then they may also profit from it and not give anything in return to those that came before.

The problem here is the scale and the power that enables that scale. This is industrial level mining of non-consenting humans, exploiting their life's work in many cases.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#945

Post by AlexandrB »

bergenty wrote: post #562
burkaman wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most people are concerned that Copilot is going to be reproducing verbatim copyrighted code, it's more that it sucks that a giant corporation is going to make a billion dollars from a tool that is entirely built off of millions of peoples' work who were never asked permission and will never be compensated.

So what? Anti progressive luddites, it makes my blood boil.

When OSS code gets ripped off and people are mad: "Anti progressive luddites".

When closed source code leaks: "Copyright infringement by criminals".

What's the difference? There's plenty the world could learn from the source code of Windows or GTA6 and having access to the source of these large projects would move society forward faster. So why are OSS contributors protecting their rights "Anti progressive luddites", while the large copyright owners who guard their proprietary code like a dragon guarding gold are let off the hook?

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#946

Post by AlexandrB »

andyp-kw wrote: post #504
nightski wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm not worried about the end user using copyrighted code. That is their responsibility. If you have verbatim GPL code in your commercial closed source code base that is a liability and it might be dangerous to use copilot. What I have more of a problem with is Microsoft charging for copilot which was trained on copyrighted code without any permission whatsoever which they really have no right to utilize/c…

As a human, if I learn how to program by studying copyrighted code, is it unethical for me to use that knowledge to make a living ?

Setting aside the very real question of whether AI "learns" the same way we do, it's bad enough we treat corporations as "people" in a legal sense, let's not start extending the same courtesy to software tools.

People have special rights and responsibilities under our legal system - we don't send an airplane that has a mechanical fault to prison for a crash nor do we extend right to life to a web server. Humans have an implicit the right to learn by reading copyrighted material, machines have no such right.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#947

Post by kurtreed »

kurtreed wrote: post #925

To me the whole point of open source is selfless giving and sharing. You build something and release the source code in case it's useful for whatever purpose people might have: learning, understanding, contributing, forking, copying, etc. And companies might build on it, train models from it, use it internally, who knows. Great. Other companies can do the same and compete. So can other open source projects. For some…

Eta: honestly asking, this is just my heuristic, not something I've thought a lot about

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#948

Post by ROTMetro »

627467 wrote: post #344
ROTMetro wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is copyright. I put it out there with a government guaranty that I get to retain ownership out of it. Society at large benefits because more people put their stuff out their. You want to break that deal and you will end up with less sharing. Why are you for information silos? I am for open ideas and sharing. You are for stealing and breaking the moral agreement because distributing my code in the form of an AI a…

Copyright is not universal. And it will be increasingly be less so.

You will then increasing get LESS sharing and MORE silos. There is a reason copyright laws exist, it's because they are a NET PLUS to society. It's not just 'for the benefit of EVIL corp'.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#949

Post by AlexandrB »

Master_Odin wrote: post #917
samhuk wrote: post #811

Although I'm aware that this tool is a boon to many, particularly those with impediments like RSI, I still have to echo what a number of other comments say: There really is a very large proportion of adult software developers in the market who are simply too young to have lived through the EEE Microsoft era. Add on to that the proportion of old-enough Microsoft-brand "dotnetter" software developers who simply don't c…

If this is MS trying to pull off EEE, what does the extinguish phase look like? That they try to make it so that any codebase the uses copilot is owned by them, and that there's no way to turn it off because all other editors or code hosting sites will exist? Plausible I suppose if they play the game for several decades and somehow no one else produces any innovation in the space.

Extinguish might look like Microsoft or their customers/partners writing proprietary replacements for open source products with the help of copilot. I don't know how likely this is, but what co-pilot provides is a plausible path for leveraging open source code to create closed-source products. Over time this allows the proprietary software industry to contribute back less code while still benefitting enormously.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#950

Post by samhuk »

Master_Odin wrote: post #917
samhuk wrote: post #811

Although I'm aware that this tool is a boon to many, particularly those with impediments like RSI, I still have to echo what a number of other comments say: There really is a very large proportion of adult software developers in the market who are simply too young to have lived through the EEE Microsoft era. Add on to that the proportion of old-enough Microsoft-brand "dotnetter" software developers who simply don't c…

If this is MS trying to pull off EEE, what does the extinguish phase look like? That they try to make it so that any codebase the uses copilot is owned by them, and that there's no way to turn it off because all other editors or code hosting sites will exist? Plausible I suppose if they play the game for several decades and somehow no one else produces any innovation in the space.

I'm not too sure yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if we wake up one day, and just like how it went with Facebook buying oculus, we will all of a sudden require some "microsoft account" to log into Github. Then more layers, and more, until there is nothing left.

Either that, or you wake up one day to see that Microsoft have stole your open source software and Microsoft says "but muh AI".

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