The basic problem is GPL tries to use copyright as a way to drive a “fair sharing and resharing” approach to code. AI generated code sold for profit violates the spirit of this approach, but not the letter of the law behind copyright. Fundamentally copyright has limitations and exceptions for good reason and is probably not the best legal method to enforce this sharing idea, but other methods would be complicated and expensive (eg writing and enforcing contracts). On the contrary, it would probably be better for open source if it was decided that ai generated code cannot be copyrighted and therefore any ai generated code would be in the public domain automatically.
GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
71–80 of 156 posts
Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
If those weights are a derivative of GPL'd code in a different form, and the results generate things derived from that derivative, then the generated code is still under license. "How much change is enough" has always been a gray area for courts and humans to decide. If you can get a decent facsimile of licensed code out the other end, how is it really any different from lossy compression? I doubt the courts would co…
If the output is substantially similar to GPL’d training data it may be infringing. Nobody disputes this. However, copyright isn’t cooties. If the output is not similar, then it is not infringing regardless of how much GPL’d training data was used to generate it.
Suspend all knowledge of copyright law as it exists today for a moment and approach this hypothetical on first principles: a lot of GPL copyleft data is used in the making of an AI tool, that when asked for it, can itself recreate code similar to what was input... also, the creator of that AI tool will reap in all the profits without giving a single penny or even recognition of the value it guzzled from GPL data it was trained on to creators of original copyleft data. Is this fair? What do your scruples tell you?
No, of course not. We should probably revisit copyright law, given that it was written at a time when no-one foresaw modern AI tools, its capabilities, and its effects on creators and societies.
Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
#73Mr Reda appears to be a politician whose expertise is in attaining lucrative positions:
Felix was elected to the board of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany in 2020. Felix is an expert in copyright law and has been Director of Developer Policy at GitHub since March 2024. He previously headed the “control ©” project at the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte. From 2014 to 2019, Felix was a Member of the European Parliament within the Greens/EFA group. Felix is an Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a member of the Advisory Board of D64 - Center for Digital Progress.
Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
#74This is missing the largest argument in my opinion. The weights are the derivative work of the GPL licensed code and should therefore be released under the GPL. I would say these companies release their weights or simply not train on copyleft code. It is truly amazing how many people will shill for these massive corporations that claim they love open source or that their AI is open while they profit off of the violat…
He works for GitHub and has probably never written anything in his life:
Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
#75This is missing the largest argument in my opinion. The weights are the derivative work of the GPL licensed code and should therefore be released under the GPL. I would say these companies release their weights or simply not train on copyleft code. It is truly amazing how many people will shill for these massive corporations that claim they love open source or that their AI is open while they profit off of the violat…
> The weights are the derivative work of the GPL licensed code EU courts disagree: > Under European copyright law, scraping GPL-licensed code, or any other copyrighted work, is legal, regardless of the licence used.
Sure, scraping it is by itself legal. But making a derivative worR from it and selling it?
Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are confusing "software UX" with "software freedom". The primary consideration is freedom for the user. Ease-of-use for the user is a different consideration.
"The core is always the user and what they need." I was referring to this and the main thing users need, is software they can use to solve their problems. If they have to study IT to do so, or hire programmers first, then this would be primarily a new (and big) problem to them, before they even can start working on their problem.
You certainly don’t need to study IT to use Linux.
Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is astonishing is that a large proportion of Free Software community relies on a platform owned by Microsoft.
Because MS bought it. Don't invert the dependencies. MS depends on Free Software, not vice-versa.
GitHub was already proprietary before Micro$oft bought it.
Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about the emitted code which is actually derived from GPL code? What about BSL, SSPL, or other source available (for your eyes only) licenses? Copilot harvests all public repos, regardless of its license.
IANAL but searched a lot on this, this is very tricky subject legally. To simplify: - imagine all code Copilot trained on is GPL licensed. - we have a universal function `isInfringing(code)` that has access to all GPL code, and returns `true` if it is infringing some GPL code. for a given prompt; if `isInfringing(copilot(prompt))==false` we cannot claim copilot infringing on GPL code, even it is trained on GPLed code…
> so the problem starts here; does the piece of code copilot emits, if written by yourself also would be infringing ?
why everyone on discussions tries to bring "if a human made it"? a generative AI operates way faster than anyone ever existed and ever will and probably a person aware of the license & acting respectful towards it, will create something more sensible/plausible to avoid plagiarism
now having dozen/hundreds/thousands of humans substituted by a machine that makes money for some for-profit company is really fair? even if they were a non-profit, as someone pointed up, people who create the content that feeds the weights aren't recieving a penny! they already made money with it, they will make more & that is/will upgrading/e the state of gen. AI
for sure legal battles on people copying code from permissive licenses should exist but it's feels a different discussion
Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
#79The author asserts that AI-generated code cannot be copyrighted, which courts have agreed with so far, but in practice most AI-generated code is being claimed to be copyrighted, if you believe GitHub’s own stats about how much Copilot is being used.
Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The core is always the user and what they need." I was referring to this and the main thing users need, is software they can use to solve their problems. If they have to study IT to do so, or hire programmers first, then this would be primarily a new (and big) problem to them, before they even can start working on their problem.
You certainly don’t need to study IT to use Linux.
Well, let's put it like this. I did study IT and even I struggle at times. Or quite often, if I want to do something new.
And I absolutey would have no idea, how to do anything serious, without the terminal. But a terminal is programming. So yeah, even a newb can learn to paste some commands quite quickly - but troubleshooting even trivial things, gets you into highly technical stuff very quickly. Do you consider man pages to be written beginnerfriendly?
You know, simple examples of common use cases right on top? Not my experience. I experienced it as a system written by and for hackers. And everything else an afterthought at best. I remember my first real life linux hardcore enthusiasts: "I have to free myself from the GUI"
Well, I did, but the common people won't.