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VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

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Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#491

Post by mplanchard »

jdlshore wrote: post #438
schwede wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the commit editor hide the coauthored message? Why not pre-populate the text field and users take or leave it when committing?

Co-Authored-By is normally a trailer, and trailers aren’t part of the commit message. It’s likely the commit editor isn’t set up to show trailers. They’re not exactly obscure, but it does seem that they’re relatively unknown.

What do you mean they aren’t part of the commit message? Trailers like (signed off by) are absolutely part of the message. Tools can choose to treat them as special metadata, but they’re part of the commit.

The docs for the function to interpret trailers even says this explicitly: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-interpret-trailers

> Add or parse structured information in commit messages

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#492

Post by Henchman21 »

yankohr wrote: post #84

This feels like the modern version of 'Sent from my iPhone' but much more invasive. Git commits are legal and technical records. Falsifying who authored a piece of code just to pump up AI usage stats is a huge breach of trust and it is disappointing to see Microsoft prioritize branding over the integrity of the developer's log. I expect my IDE to record what happened, not what the marketing department wants people to…

I think it's kinda cute that you don't see it as an attempt to steal code by claiming they "co-authored" it. How long before they claim they can use any code co-authored by Copilot in training? How long before you see your own code, "co-authored by Copilot" as an output in a commercial product that YOU aren't making a profit from? Just a thought :)

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#493

Post by mplanchard »

solid_fuel wrote: post #478
dmitriv wrote: post #268

I am the person who approved this PR and would like to acknowledge and apologize for the mistake of turning this feature on by default without sufficient upfront validation. There was no ill intent by evil corporation, but rather a desire to support functionality that some customers expect of VS Code w.r.t. AI-generated code. As folks mentioned here - many similar tools do this as well. Obviously, it should not be on…

> I am open to any (constructive) comments/suggestions Here's one: I think a senior sysadmin needs to sit you down in their office and have a very serious talk with you about the responsibility that comes with writing code other people run. I am serious. We used to have these talks with everyone who got sudo access. You shouldn't be shipping code if you don't understand the trust that is required of people in your po…

To be fair, looks like a PM vibe coded it and this person “just” gave it an approval with no comments after an LLM review.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#494

Post by throwaway277432 »

kgeist wrote: post #416
dmitriv wrote: post #268

I am the person who approved this PR and would like to acknowledge and apologize for the mistake of turning this feature on by default without sufficient upfront validation. There was no ill intent by evil corporation, but rather a desire to support functionality that some customers expect of VS Code w.r.t. AI-generated code. As folks mentioned here - many similar tools do this as well. Obviously, it should not be on…

Interesting case: - a project manager vibe-coded the change without thinking it through at all - the PR was reviewed by an LLM - an actual engineer gave LGTM without really reviewing the changes, trusting the LLM Did I get this right?

>a project manager vibe-coded the change without thinking it through at all

The PMs vibe-coding and having no idea what they're doing isn't even the main issue (although it is pretty bad).

The main issue is: how are the actual engineers supposed to "review" the slop? They probably report to the same PM or are at below in the org chart and might be evaluated by them. Not just at MS, but any company.

Such a conflict of interest would be detrimental to quality anywhere. You wouldn't build a bridge like this, nor should you software.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#495

Post by sillysaurusx »

nsagent wrote: post #485
dmitriv wrote: post #268

I am the person who approved this PR and would like to acknowledge and apologize for the mistake of turning this feature on by default without sufficient upfront validation. There was no ill intent by evil corporation, but rather a desire to support functionality that some customers expect of VS Code w.r.t. AI-generated code. As folks mentioned here - many similar tools do this as well. Obviously, it should not be on…

Just for any future mea culpa, I'd recommend not hedging with comments like this one: > As folks mentioned here - many similar tools do this as well. It's really doubtful they have the same behavior people are complaining about here: namely including the authored by Copilot statement when it wasn't used (or even enabled).

Anthropic does by default. I had to put “no co-authored by lines in commits, ever” into my global settings.

That’s pretty close to “included when it wasn’t used (or even enabled)” since it’s opt-in by default and you have to explicitly say no. It’s not even clear where to turn it off, I just rely on the AI to figure out not to do it.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#496

Post by brendoelfrendo »

ddkto wrote: post #57

The best part is that copilot commented on the PR saying that this doesn’t actually change the behaviour, creates inconsistency in the codebase and suggested reverting the change! (This comment seems to have been ignored…) > The configuration schema default was changed to "all", but the runtime fallback in extensions/git/src/repository.ts still calls config.get('addAICoAuthor', 'off'). This is now out of sync and can…

There are two commits in the PR, the second of the two seems to update the fallback config to avoid the inconsistency that Copilot was complaining about.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#497

Post by strix_varius »

kgeist wrote: post #416
dmitriv wrote: post #268

I am the person who approved this PR and would like to acknowledge and apologize for the mistake of turning this feature on by default without sufficient upfront validation. There was no ill intent by evil corporation, but rather a desire to support functionality that some customers expect of VS Code w.r.t. AI-generated code. As folks mentioned here - many similar tools do this as well. Obviously, it should not be on…

Interesting case: - a project manager vibe-coded the change without thinking it through at all - the PR was reviewed by an LLM - an actual engineer gave LGTM without really reviewing the changes, trusting the LLM Did I get this right?

You can't make this shit up.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#498

Post by serial_dev »

somebehemoth wrote: post #349
dmitriv wrote: post #268

I am the person who approved this PR and would like to acknowledge and apologize for the mistake of turning this feature on by default without sufficient upfront validation. There was no ill intent by evil corporation, but rather a desire to support functionality that some customers expect of VS Code w.r.t. AI-generated code. As folks mentioned here - many similar tools do this as well. Obviously, it should not be on…

I think the constructive criticism is best directed at whatever process you are following. That process allowed a very visible user facing change in a widely used piece of software. How did this change make it to production without some process catching the impact of this change? Was there really no internal discussion from a code review at least? This seems hard for me to believe. I expect more from Microsoft.

> Was there really no internal discussion from a code review at least? This seems hard for me to believe.

The outlined story feels unfortunately very believable to me.

Teams need to push out the most number of features, and nobody stops even for a second to think about how a feature might affect other flows or other users not in the feature request.

It might have been quickly reviewed to check if the code does what it needs to do (add the coauthor note).

Do you think reviewers will think about unwanted effects, when they need get back to feeding their own poorly thought out and underspec’d features to their LLMs?

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#499

Post by throwaway277432 »

mplanchard wrote: post #493
solid_fuel wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am open to any (constructive) comments/suggestions Here's one: I think a senior sysadmin needs to sit you down in their office and have a very serious talk with you about the responsibility that comes with writing code other people run. I am serious. We used to have these talks with everyone who got sudo access. You shouldn't be shipping code if you don't understand the trust that is required of people in your po…

To be fair, looks like a PM vibe coded it and this person “just” gave it an approval with no comments after an LLM review.

To be fair, that makes it worse for MS, not better.

This should not be vibe-coded by someone who has absolutely no idea about any of these things.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#500

Post by abustamam »

artyom wrote: post #484
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is certainly bad behavior that Microsoft did this. But it's irrational to jump from there to "this is what they always did and always will do" as OP did. Corporations are not unchangeable monoliths, and it was perfectly reasonable to use Microsoft tools when they were acting decently towards their users. Now that they have turned user-hostile, it makes sense to avoid them until they learn their lesson, and so on.…

Hatred for a corporation is as useful as hatred for a nuclear bomb. No matter how harmful or destructive, it lacks any sort of free will that would make it a reasonable target for such hate. There's actual people making it happen , though.

I always take "I hate X company" as "I hate the decisions X company makes and the people who make these decisions" for this reason.

But it's kinda verbose.

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