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Copilot was made from stealing code on Github, ignoring the licenses set on repos such as e.g GPLv2, using AI as a trick to license-launder code. Copilot has announced their plans to become a paid service. So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company.
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Copilot generally (excepting rare cases where it produces snippets verbatim) does not steal code. The GPL restricts distribution, not usage. And (to my knowledge) no open-source license restricts learning from code. I cannot see anyone who doesn't want others to learn from their code ever release code as open-source.
I as an open source author absolutely do not want Microsoft to get richer from using my code, code that I contributed or published for the benefits of other developers. They took my work, removed my name and trained an advanced pattern matching technique to try to make code like mine and then sell it. It’s so obviously ethically questionable it’s insane. Developers are absolutely pissed about this, and rightfully so.
Copilot was made from stealing code on Github, ignoring the licenses set on repos such as e.g GPLv2, using AI as a trick to license-launder code. Copilot has announced their plans to become a paid service. So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company.
So what you're saying is that you have the right to host your code for free, to download it from GitHub for free (no bandwith paid) and to behave like new-age Robin Hood when it comes to being offended because the very same company use that code - not to run it, but analyze it. Stop being entitled, it's seriously hard to participate in any kind of progress with offendable cauliflowers like you.
It's just a footnote.
I think it's getting talked about more than it deserves to be.
That said, I haven't turned it off yet. It's very fun on those occasions when it suggests correctly.
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There's a difference between building a product using open source and not contributing back, and copying licensed code into your own codebase. One is rude and the other is straight up illegal.
The code doesn't exist in Copilot. The instructions for how to recreate the code does. On a very pedantic level those are not the same, but it probably is enough to argue that the product is 100% legal. It is still quite rude to do that though.
All the time I wrote the code in the last years, I ended up discovering someone ALREADY have done it, often in a better way (not always).
There is a nice quote who says "Who did not know Unix is doomed to rewrite it..." I think the same is with Java/Python/... code.
It is tempting to apply Betteridge's Law and answer no. But, perhaps the answer is yes. It probably can be a blessing, once you're used to it. And it certainly can be a curse, writing code that is incorrect, buggy, or just not understood by the programmer. It would be nice if it better could explain its reasons and add references relating to the snippets. Maybe one day. Until then, I think I'll just google stackexcha…
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This sounds almost like Tesla's Autopilot, both in naming and in actual performance.
Ha, I ranted about this two weeks ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27724969
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AI is getting better than humans at a lot of complex task over time. Just because it can't code well now doesn't mean it won't in the future.
What it means that it can't code well, so there's nothing to be excited about. That we cannot predict the future is of course true but really has no bearing on what you're saying, except to lend credence to the idea that it will be able to some day (i.e. that you can predict the future). Which is in essence the opposite of what "we cannot predict the future" should mean. That makes the entire argument kind of disinge…