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Saying Goodbye to GitHub

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Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#141

Post by the_gipsy »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #94
pcthrowaway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You agree to Microsoft's ToS before you can put any code on Github, regardless of the license. You can't opt-out of those terms, regardless of your license, just as you can't opt out of Facebooks terms which give them the right to use your content for their business or marketing purposes, even if the various chain posts that have spread there might claim otherwise.

If code with a license, say GPL, goes out somewhere else, by someone else (and therefore I don't have the right to change the license) and then I fork it, as per the license I keep the license and put it on github, and Github violates that license, aren't they violating the law? Don't they then have to remove that code? If that's the case then in that scenario the license supersedes the ToS right? Now imagine this: I…

> If code with a license, say GPL, goes out somewhere else, by someone else (and therefore I don't have the right to change the license) and then I fork it, as per the license I keep the license and put it on github, and Github violates that license, aren't they violating the law? Don't they then have to remove that code?

You are violating the law, probably. The ToS would say something like "I hereby declare that I hve the right to agree over the software to submit it under the ToS".

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#142

Post by layer8 »

eviks wrote: post #95

Why don't the alternative projects just copy the good old github interface instead of starting from a bad scratch, scaring the transitioning devs off?

Copyright could be an issue. Also, they may not agree that the GitHub interface is “good”.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#143

Post by DrBazza »

> I feel like GitHub has lost that magic.

Am I the only person that used Github for what it was? A place to push and pull my repos from my CLI? That hasn't changed. I rarely use the website.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#144

Post by jacquesm »

techdragon wrote: post #138
saurik wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to make sure you appreciate that if you really believe this argument then GitHub can only be used by the people who actually directly own the copyright on projects; and if you, for example, want to clone and edit my software (the vast majority of which I explicitly never uploaded to GitHub) then you wouldn't be allowed to (which doesn't seem like either the intention or the way it is commonly used)... and…

I'm pretty sure thats a narrower interpretation than GitHub are aiming for. I'm just paraphrasing the parts of GitHub's ToS that I can remember since current debate on the topic has lead to me remembering a few important parts reasonably well but I've certainly not memorised them. So this is a good opportunity for me to go re-read them and quote them directly... (also in case anyone is about to mention it ... I am aw…

But... we're all aware - as is GitHub - that plenty of the content there is not posted by the original copyright holders, who are the only parties that are able to enter into such a contract. That was the reason for GitHub coming into existence in the first place. You can't turn around a couple of years later and start arguing that the use of GitHub allows for a blanket exemption on copyright law, which is effectively what this amounts to.

GitHub ToS is written by GitHub, it's not a contract in the sense that no consideration has been given to the other party and as such it isn't legally binding on that other party, but regular law, such as copyright law, still applies to GitHub.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#145

Post by FeepingCreature »

cowl wrote: post #120
LASR wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty ironic that the argument that LLMs are stochastic parrots actually sounds like the actual parrot. I think we’re now way past that now with LLMs now quickly taking on the role of a general reasoning engine.

> now quickly taking on the role of a general reasoning engine And this right here is why it's important to emphasize the "stochastic parrot" fact. Because people think this is true and are making decisions based on this misunderstanding.

Or maybe they just disagree with you?

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#146

Post by bruce511 »

uuuguaii wrote: post #107
bruce511 wrote: post #11

I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept. I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. Some Open Source licenses can be used in proprietary code, (MIT, BSD etc) with little more than simple attribution. Those developers chose that license for a reason, and I'…

> I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. In essence, copyleft licenses are exactly that. They oblige the author of a derived work to publish the changes to all users under the same terms. The original authors tend to be users. So, a license which would grant this directly to the original authors woul…

I'm not sure I agree with this as a general point of view.

Speaking generally, I'm not sure that one can claim

>> The original authors tend to be the users

There are endless forks of say emacs,and I expect RMS is not s user of any of them.

Of course RMS is free to inspect the code for all of them, separate out bug fixes from features, and retro apply it to his build. But I'm not seeing anything in any license that requires a fork to "push" bug fixes to him.

>> This aligns with the reason why some people publish their work under copyleft licenses: You get my work, for free, and the deal is that if you find and fix bugs then I get to benefit from those fixes by them flowing back to me.

I think you are reading terms into the license that simply don't exist. I agree a lot of programmers -believe- this is how Free Software works, and many do push bug fixes upstream, but that's orthogonal to Free Software principles, and outside the terms of the license.

>> That's the spirit here and trying to argue around that with technicalities is disingenuous.

Licenses are matters of law, not spirit. The original post is about this "spirit". My thesis is that he, and you, are inferring responsibilities that are simply not in the license. This isn't a technicality,it goes to the very heart of Free Software.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#147

Post by mattlutze »

sjamaan wrote: post #76
fariszr wrote: post #33

> The code that was regurgitated by the model is marketed as "AI generated" and available for use for any project you want. Including proprietary ones. It's laundering open-source code. All of the decades of knowledge and uncountable hours of work is being, well, stolen. There is nothing being given back. Leaving GitHub wont change that, OpenAI is training its models on every bit of code they can have, sourcehut, cod…

> Also from my experience of trying to leave GitHub, you just end up having a couple of projects on your alternative platform, and everything else on GitHub. > And if you want to build a community, you will quickly find out that the majority want to stick to GitHub, and leaving it can kill your projects chances of getting contributions. That's a defeatist attitude and a self-fulfilling prophecy at the same time. As m…

Parent is talking about a fundamental feature of networks. A denser and larger network has much more useful network-related features, and if one company has a significant majority of the total addressable market for a network, it's a massive ask for people to extricate themselves and rebuild a network somewhere else.

It's why Facebook is still on top even though everyone hated it for a while; YouTube is the *only video platform, etc.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#148

Post by slg »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #63
slg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are being honest as a community, open source developer are pretty far down the list of groups with valid grievances against this current wave of AI for how they are trained. There is at least a debatable case that these systems are operating in the spirit if not the exact letter of general open source licenses. It is a much harder argument to make for the AI trained on writing and art that is clearly copyrighte…

So you're suggesting that developers shut up and let the artists talk first? I'm not sure what the "you're suffering less than these other people" thing is actually intended to translate into? What do we do with that? All software licences are based on copyright, same as writing, art, music, etc. Some software licences are permissive. Some writing is permissive (e.g. Cory Doctorow). Some music is permissive (e.g. Ama…

> So you're suggesting that developers shut up and let the artists talk first? I'm not sure what the "you're suffering less than these other people" thing is actually intended to translate into? What do we do with that?

The tech community has a tendency to not care about issues like this until it effects us. I’m not telling people to shut up about this. I’m saying don’t be a hypocrite. If this is the wrong approach for GitHub, it is a problem with the way all these AI are trained.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#149

Post by layer8 »

the_gipsy wrote: post #136
layer8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possible problem is if Copilot gets good enough that you can rather easily sidestep GPL (or any other license) by having Copilot implement functionality X for you instead of using a license-bound library providing X. Not only may this be questionable regarding the license, but it would also be tend to reduce contributions to the library which otherwise would have been used.

Shouldn't be different from a human ripping or regurgitating parts of the code. If it's not a hard derivation, then it's difficult to prove or even notice.

My point was more about the possible negative effects than about the legality.

An important difference is that AIs are much cheaper than a human. Having a library reimplemented by a human usually isn’t cost-effective, but having it done by an AI may become viable. That could cause a major change in the open-source dynamics, while possibly also reducing average software quality (because less code is publicly scrutinized).

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#150

Post by friend_and_foe »

the_gipsy wrote: post #141
friend_and_foe wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If code with a license, say GPL, goes out somewhere else, by someone else (and therefore I don't have the right to change the license) and then I fork it, as per the license I keep the license and put it on github, and Github violates that license, aren't they violating the law? Don't they then have to remove that code? If that's the case then in that scenario the license supersedes the ToS right? Now imagine this: I…

> If code with a license, say GPL, goes out somewhere else, by someone else (and therefore I don't have the right to change the license) and then I fork it, as per the license I keep the license and put it on github, and Github violates that license, aren't they violating the law? Don't they then have to remove that code? You are violating the law, probably. The ToS would say something like "I hereby declare that I h…

I'm not violating the law, I'm violating the ToS. They should them remove the my account and the offending code, lest they then go on to violate the law, no?
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