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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

#851

Post by solid_fuel »

ATMLOTTOBEER wrote: post #480
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…

He makes more money than you and you’re responding to his ai chatbot Seethe

There’s more to life than money, child.

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

#852

Post by matheusmoreira »

golf_mike wrote: post #774
matheusmoreira wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can do both just fine without building the torment nexus Doubt. You don't become truly wealthy without doing what sociopathic CEOs do on a daily basis. Society actively rewards that stuff, and it's only getting worse with time. > Simple lack of morals, impaired empathy and remorse. Sounds like a winning strategy to me. That's the exact sort of person this world rewards. Things are not looking good out there. Bi…

And your reasoning is exactly what makes it a winning strategy. "If other people do it, then why not me?" That makes it that they are no longer other people, you yourself are a part of that group now. One could argue that it is an even worse position. It literally makes you an enabler of the problem you see in the world, while at the same time you acknowledge it as an even existential problem. When we are with billio…

> If other people do it, then why not me?

Yeah. At some point you get tired of paying the costs that others sociopathically push onto you and start trying to take at least some of the value for yourself instead.

If society has a problem with that, then maybe it should start demonstrating it by making examples out of all those sociopaths instead of turning the other way and quietly profiting from it while the nobodies seethe impotently about things they have no power to change.

> Your reasoning makes me sad as instead of questioning what constitutes true wealth, it seems you are guided by an exclusively materialistic view of it and join the destructive behaviour you see around you out of fear of not having enough.

I'm a free software developer. I quite literally give it all away. I'm also a doctor in a 3rd world country. I work hard to help people for wages that would make 300k+/year 1st world doctors cry themselves to sleep.

I was actually fine taking the moral high road... Until a couple years ago. What changed? I got married. Got people depending on me now. So my patience and empathy for people who are not literally paying my bills is indeed starting to wear a bit thin.

Sad? No one's sadder about it than me. This existential realization gave me actual diagnosed depression. I literally go to therapy because of this shit. That sort of cold sociopathy is simply not the way I was raised.

The problem is my mind cannot deal with this corrupt world by idealizing it. For my own psychological and financial well being, I cannot continue to entertain ideas of what the world could be, if only people were good. I must interpret the world based on what's real.

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

#853

Post by i_think_so »

shaky-carrousel wrote: post #606
carschno wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In literally must have missed that. When did Microsoft ever encourage energy saving? Is this related to power saving for extending laptop battery runtime? But then I don't get the link to renewable energy. Anyway, I agree with the notion of the extreme energy-inefficiency of LLMs. The scale of it makes it hard to imagine any less efficient product will ever be invented.

They literally have a green leaf next to power saving options. Also, there's an option in windows upgrades to time the upgrades to when the grid is mostly renewables.

Could this be hacked to schedule upgrades to only happen when the user is not about to join a meeting in 5 minutes?

"Yeah, uh, my local electric provider is burning coal 24/7 except at 9-10 pm on these 5 dates each year...."

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

#854

Post by golem14 »

dmitriv wrote: post #571
golem14 wrote: post #375

I miss in this whole thread why this is happening. Presumably to be transparent whether code has been co-written by AI? What's in it for Microsoft? If we accept that AI can't copyright or own IP rights on something, then why? I have a sneaky suspicion that there's some lobbying in the works to overturn that ruling going forward. In the past, it was OK to build models from copyrighted data etc one might have found on…

The change was about helping teams ensure AI-generated code is attributed in commits - nothing to do with copyrights and the like. If you don't have to take my word for it - query VS Code repo for changes and issues that went into implementing this and you will see.

It would be easier to rationalize it if there were an assurance that AI-generated code would be generally credited with the model used. But as I understand it, this credit only happens when using the co-pilot GUI, right? No credit for copy paste code from uncertain pedigree? So I think it makes sense to question the logic here.

Would be possible to admit a brain fart and roll the change back?

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

#855

Post by wswope »

dang wrote: post #827
wswope wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is seriously not ok on HN. You can't attack others like this, regardless of how justified you are or feel you are, and we ban accounts that do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: your account has unfortunately done this before (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47548889 ). I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review the site rules and not do anything like this again on HN, we'd…

Fair play; I got too personal here. Apologies.

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

#856

Post by matheusmoreira »

bdangubic wrote: post #772
matheusmoreira wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to blame the engineer when the engineer gets fired for not implementing management's whims. As much as I'd like to hold people accountable and say they should just accept getting fired instead of compromising the ideals, the truth is I've got a family now and if they paid me enough I'd do the same.

that defense did not work at nuremberg trial

Only because the Nazis lost and the people they genocided judged them for it.

Do you think the trillionaires are losing? Do you think you're likely to end up on the judge's bench?

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

#857

Post by matheusmoreira »

allarm wrote: post #768
wiseowise wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear bomb was built by scientists and they weren't the one that fired it, what's your point?

Their point, however, is perfectly clear - it’s practically obvious. No one forced them at gunpoint (unlike those scientists, figuratively speaking). Why are you pretending not to understand?

> No one forced them at gunpoint

Of course not. Modern weapons are far more sophisticated. Society does not need to point guns at people to drive behavior anymore, it is sufficient to deploy simple economics. People feel the sting of the economic lash just the same as the literal instrument.

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

#858

Post by bdangubic »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #856
bdangubic wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that defense did not work at nuremberg trial

Only because the Nazis lost and the people they genocided judged them for it. Do you think the trillionaires are losing? Do you think you're likely to end up on the judge's bench?

sure did not look in 1942 like nazis were losing either. doesn’t look like in 2026 but time is a bitch and nazis eventually meet their fate

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

#859

Post by Kadecgos »

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…

Whether or not the intent is good, the optics are extremely bad.

I assume you are keenly aware that Windows, Office, and by extension, all of MS's customer facing products are not exactly regarded particularly well. Windows 11 specifically is a laughing stock today, even among folks who don't necessarily know computers, and a lot of that resentment is driven by 2 things:

• Pushing AI everywhere when no one asked for it. • Not reading the room and adding junk features that no one wants.

This change is both of those, again, wrapped up in another package. The timing of this is extremely bad for VS Code as a project as it looks an awful lot like, 'Microsoft is just shoving my AI junk into my stuff and failing to work on the features we actually want'.

I'm not taking a side on this either way as I will jam a fork into my eye before I use VS Code over VS proper and have no stake in this, but I'm just saying that the powers that be that are approving these kinds of changes are ~continuing~ to fail to read the room.

I'll add as someone who may be forced to consider VS Code in the future (Depending on if Windows unfucks itself before something critical breaks for me on W10), I would read something like that and I think rightly assume bad intent. I know VS Code and VS and Office and Windows are not the same team, but again, MS as a whole has a very serious optics problems and my read of this on the surface level is: "Oh, they tried to sneak in more AI junk, and when called out on it, they pushed it to the back, probably to make it a default again in some future update that they can hide it in". It just looks very, very bad at a time when no MS products have negative social capital to spend on this kind of stuff.

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

#860

Post by [deleted] »

bdangubic wrote: post #767
bjt wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still if you're the lawyer on the side of the lawsuit claiming that the code is copyrightable, you really don't want that copilot attribution in the commit message muddying the waters.

you actually do, as counter-intuitive as that seems. co-authored implies (and gives you room to argue) that you were involved in the process. hiding the fact that you did if proven otherwise (not that hard to prove in many cases if it comes to that) won’t be looking good. at my work, we are mandated to include AI attribution and I would say every well-run company should have same mandate

[deleted]
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