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Saying Goodbye to GitHub

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Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#151

Post by bruce511 »

dijit wrote: post #74
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. §5.c of the GPL Version 3 states explicitly: > You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they…

>> As in, all modifications must be made available. Is that not meeting your definition of giving back?

Available to all users. Not previous authors. There may be overlap, or there may not be overlap.

Plus, I would say it's giving forward, not back. If there are public users then the original authors can become users and get the code. But there will be bug fixes and features smooshed together.

Which is why i posit that there's no "give back" concept in the license. Only "give forward".

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#153

Post by techdragon »

jacquesm wrote: post #144
techdragon wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 effectivel…

Its the same as other user generated content sites... The ToS is to legally shift blame from GitHub to the users... and thats what made me think of "code id" actually, since GitHub have a firm defence in the form of "Users doing illegal things isn't our fault, we asked them not to and tried to kick people off when we found out they were violating the terms, but they might still get slapped around a bit by the Court and need to implement some form of safeguards the way YouTube was forced to, because your point about how binding the terms of service are when the consideration is "use of this service in exchange for agreement" is true, there is not a super strong contract here, its nominally more binding than the average clickwrap contract pre-install EULA since the consideration in exchange is use of the service itself, but as case law around things like scraping and other internet activity has shown, its definitely not as binding as a physically signed sale contract would be...

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#154

Post by ratherbefuddled »

ethbr0 wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are really not going to care about what you put into your license file, they are just going to claim that the use of GitHub binds you to their terms of service and that this supersedes your own license. Good luck fighting that.

ToS doesn't supercede copyright though, does it? The real rub will be the first court precedent on whether GPTs infringe on source data IP. Could see it going either way: fundamentally transformative or not.

> ToS doesn't supercede copyright though, does it?

But in what way does reading a copyrighted work and then producing a mass of numbers as a result infringe copyright?

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#155

Post by ksec »

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 gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept.

Well I guess you know why you may be hated for this already. For anyone who has surf HN since ~2010 would know or should notice the definition of open source has changed over the past 10-15 years. Giving Back and Communities are the two predominant Open Source ideals now. Along with making lots money on top of OSS code being somewhat a contentious issue to say the least.

But I want to side step the idealistic issue and think this is more of an economic issue. Where this could be attributed as a zero interest rate phenomenon. You now have developers ( especially those from US ) for most if not all of their professional life living under the money / investment were easy, comparatively speaking. And they should give back when money ( or should I say cash flow ) isn’t an issue. When $200K Total Comp were suppose to be the norm for fresh grad joining Google. And management thinking $500K is barely enough they need to work their way to $1M, while seniors developer believes if Junior were worth $200K than they are asking for $1M total comp is perfectly sane, or some other extreme where everyone in the company should earn exactly the same.

If Twitter or social media were any indication you see a lot of these ideals were completely gone from the conversation. Although this somehow started before the layoffs.

It is somewhat interesting to see the sociologic and idealogical changes with respect to economics changes. But then again, economics in itself is perhaps the largest field psychology study.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#156

Post by the_gipsy »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #150
the_gipsy wrote: post #141

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? 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?

Yes but I guess it won't happen until someone complains. Similar to other content, e.g. YouTube, but in reality nobody requests takedowns of forks/copies.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#157

Post by euroderf »

aetherspawn wrote: post #4

Why hasn't someone just changed the GPL license already: "If you train an AI on this code, you must release the source code and generated neural net of that AI as open source" or something to that effect. It won't stop it, but it will slow it down, and it seems like the right T&Cs to put on training against GPL code because it gives an advantage to open source AIs, however minor.

When GH devised Copilot, they could have (internally, at GH) decided to make a two-tier model, one tier trained only on unrestrictive licenses, the other bringing in more-restrictively license code too. And then offer them to the GH-using public as two different functionalities. An intelligently differentiated product line for intelligent people.

But: NOOOO.

In order to close off this possibility, which would restrict Copilot revenue, they instead would roll out a single undifferentiated product and with lots of "gee whiz!" and associated hooplah, and be sure to offer it for free for a while to suck everyone in and head off criticism.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#158

Post by Incipient »

I vaguely get what the author is saying, but I think "give back" is the end result, not the issue. The vast majority of people don't give back. It's exposure.

When GPT uses code from stack overflow, you don't see the community, so there isn't any possibility to engage with it; essentially starving the community.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#159

Post by Lutger »

japhyr wrote: post #21
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'…

No need to hate on you for a valid response. I think we're in a new enough situation that we can look beyond what's legal in a license. When many of us started working on open source projects, AI was a far-off concept. Speaking for myself, I thought we'd see steady improvement in code-completion tools, but I didn't think I'd see anything like GPT-4 in my lifetime. Licenses were written for humans working with code. W…

Fully agree.

This may seem a bit nitpicky and philosophical, but anyway: these feelings you mention are about things, and these things the feelings come from are what is most important. Feelings are never standalone, if they are they are just moods which are so personal its hard to have a conversation over.

Let's call 'the things' values. I'd say feelings are perceptions of values, and as such they invariably have a conceptual element to them. And exactly that conceptual aspect makes them suitable for conversation and sometimes even debate, insofar as they can be incorrect. We can acknowledge the subjective, emotive aspect of feelings as highly and inalienably personal, respect the individual opinion behind them and contest the implicit truth-claims all at the same time.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#160

Post by feanaro »

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.

It shouldn't matter. If your model touched X during training, it should be seen as producing derivative work. This is the reason humans use clean room implementation techniques.
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