Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Saying Goodbye to GitHub

ersei.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 450 posts

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#351

Post by marcosdumay »

gavinhoward wrote: post #299

I am someone that also left GitHub. [1] To the author, yes, it's worth it. I didn't go to another service, though; I set up Gitea on my own server. Because of drama there, I'm going to have to replace Gitea as well. But GitLab itself is going down the drain, I'm not welcome on SourceHut, and I haven't heard the best things about Codeberg. Also, git needs a replacement. [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2020/04/i-am-moving…

I'm out of the loop. What drama has been with Gitea?

(I'm not a bit willing to put my code on the likes of SourceHut or Codeberg. They are just new iterations on the Sourceforge/GitHub pattern that didn't go bad up to now. Besides, I like to keep the software I don't publish on my computers.)

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#353

Post by xigoi »

nine_k wrote: post #336
ilyt wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All this Free Software movement started by something really similar to "right to repair", a firmware bug in a printer that was proprietary software. Free Software is about being in control of software you use. The spirit was never "contribute back to GNU", the spirit was always "if you take GNU software, you can't make it non-free". Those GNU devs at the time just wanted a good and actually free/libre OS, that woul…

A very distinctive difference. GPL software is a box that must be kept open, so that everybody would be able to take from it. If you pick the box and build an altered version of it, you must keep it open, you are legally prohibited from attaching a lid to it. There's nothing about any expectations, let alone obligations, to put anything back into the original box. Usually it's not very easy (you must follow strict st…

If you leave the box open, the original author is free to take your modification and put it into their box.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#354

Post by fauigerzigerk »

kuschku wrote: post #323
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I largely agree with you, but I think there is one question that hasn't been addressed yet: Are the weights learned by an LLM a derivative work? When a person learns from GPL code this question doesn't arise. The state of a person's brain is outside of copyright. But is the state of an LLM also outside of copyright or outside of the terms covered by the GPL? I'm not sure. An LLM can not only emit source code derived…

> the state of a person's brain is outside of copyright It clearly isn’t. Which is why clean-room reverse engineering always requires at least two people. Or why a musician that accidentally recreates a chord progression they heard years ago but don't remember the source might still get sued.

No, you're missing the very distinction I'm trying to highlight.

When I read and remember some text, possibly also learning from it, I'm not making a copy and I'm not creating a derivative work. The state of my brain is outside of copyright. Only at the point where I create a new representation based on what I have read I may be violating someone's copyrights.

But is it the same for an AI? Is the act of reading, remembering and learning (i.e. adjusting model weights) not in itself tantamount to creating a derivative work?

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#355

Post by Tryk »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #82

I abandoned github the day that they (and others, including people here) started arguing that their ToS trumps your code's license. That's absurd. It's authoritarian, it's hostile, it's an act of enmity. Fuck all that bullshit. I do business with no entity, period, that treats me with that level of disdain.

Never heard of this, that's quite shocking. Do you have any source?

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#356

Post by b3morales »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #346
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'…

It would be interesting to have Free Software License that requires that any thing which ingests the source code must be Free Software running on Free Hardware. If you train a model on such inputs, your model would need to be Free software and all the hardware the model runs on would need to be Free Hardware. This would create a massive incentivize to either not use such software in your model or to use Free Software…

This idea ("make a stronger license") has come up in previous discussions of Copilot as well[0].

The problem is that the Copilot project doesn't claim to be abiding by the license(s) of the ingested code. The reply to licensing concerns was that licensing doesn't apply to their use. So unfortunately they would just claim they could ignore your hypothetical Free³ license as well.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34277352

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#357

Post by gavinhoward »

marcosdumay wrote: post #351
gavinhoward wrote: post #299

I am someone that also left GitHub. [1] To the author, yes, it's worth it. I didn't go to another service, though; I set up Gitea on my own server. Because of drama there, I'm going to have to replace Gitea as well. But GitLab itself is going down the drain, I'm not welcome on SourceHut, and I haven't heard the best things about Codeberg. Also, git needs a replacement. [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2020/04/i-am-moving…

I'm out of the loop. What drama has been with Gitea? (I'm not a bit willing to put my code on the likes of SourceHut or Codeberg. They are just new iterations on the Sourceforge/GitHub pattern that didn't go bad up to now . Besides, I like to keep the software I don't publish on my computers.)

See https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/ . It should have links to more.

Comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33372471 .

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#358

Post by xigoi »

sureglymop wrote: post #342
EarlKing wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-pilot spits back protected expressions, not novel expressions based on ideas harvested from code. It is therefore violating the licenses of numerous free and open source projects. The author is right to be pissed.

You are correct. The problem is that the GitHub Terms of Service probably (guessing) have a clause which invalidates your license if you upload your code there. And that's exactly why you shouldn't use GitHub.

The terms of service explicitly say that GitHub is not allowed to use your code for commercial purposes.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#359

Post by EarlKing »

theonlybutlet wrote: post #295
EarlKing wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-pilot spits back protected expressions, not novel expressions based on ideas harvested from code. It is therefore violating the licenses of numerous free and open source projects. The author is right to be pissed.

That's not the case, there's a probability it may "spit back" the protected expression. There's also a probability I, as a human "spit back" the protected expressions. This could either be by pure chance or from past learnings, reading the protected code and internalizing it as a solution, my subconscious forgetting I actually saw it elsewhere. In Uni, students run their theses through plagiarism checkers, even if it…

...except you don't need an infinite number of monkeys. It has been trained to produce protected expressions by virtue of being trained on protected expressions. The probability of it producing a protected expression at some point is 1.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#360

Post by ethicalsmacker »

The timing of this post is a bit uncanny.

I left Github last week (removed all of my repositories) and made contributions private. I went further and removed all public mirrors on my personal site (along with all writing and projects on my site).

I have been growing tired of the open source community in general and with a particular distaste for the Github community (and company as a whole).

I won't get into all of my grievances and experiences simply because it doesn't matter and nothing will change.

I decided to focus on creating things for myself. I don't need your stars, green check marks, crappy pull requests and endless issues. Maybe some day I will find the spark to open my personal site back up, but it feels unlikely.

Post reply on HN