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Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

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Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#131

Post by TeMPOraL »

icebraining wrote: post #87
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

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.

Which repo marked as GPLv2 has been used on Copilot? I think the trouble is that some repos marked as MIT/BSD actually contain GPL code. Not that this excuses GitHub/Microsoft in any way, this was an obvious outcome and they're morally and legally responsible.

Honestly, I think all this talk about GPL vs MIT/BSD is a red herring.

It doesn't matter whether the code is GPL or MIT or BSD. If Copilot reproduces it in your codebase, you're violating the license anyway - almost all FLOSS licenses carry an attribution requirement, which Copilot does not and can not reproduce[0].

The difference between GPL and MIT is whether you have to release your source code, or just add a blurb in README. It's a big one, but it's downstream from the core problem: with Copilot, you won't even know when you're violating some license - much less what to do about it.

--

[0] - The whole point of a DNN model is to pre-mix the inputs in training, so that responses to queries are cheap and fast. This comes at the cost of making it impossible to reverse-query the model, so the only way for Copilot to give correct attribution would be to take its output and run a search on the training data, which would kill all the costs savings they won by using a neural network.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#132

Post by ivanbakel »

icebraining wrote: post #87
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

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.

Which repo marked as GPLv2 has been used on Copilot? I think the trouble is that some repos marked as MIT/BSD actually contain GPL code. Not that this excuses GitHub/Microsoft in any way, this was an obvious outcome and they're morally and legally responsible.

As the other commenter pointed out, Copilot has ingested all the public code on GitHub, including GPL code.

And as this famous example[0] shows, the GAN is able to reproduce what is unquestionably copyrighted material from those repos.

[0]: https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#133

Post by drran »

necovek wrote: post #89
toxik wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not even copyleft licenses prohibit somebody from earning money from what you released, and that includes Microsoft. The idea behind free software is that it benefits all users equally, even if other developers get the biggest direct benefit. The best question to ask yourself is if you would be annoyed as much if a company like Black Duck did a similar training or analysis with their OpenHub (openhub.net)? I think on…

You need to comply with license first before you can use it to defense your position.

Copilot doesn't comply with opensource licenses, so authors of Copilot lost the right to use opensource licensed code permanently, until they settle the case with authors of the code.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#134

Post by Fnoord »

There's a need to answer the question (precedent, new technology, huge potential / market interest, and ethical extremes in one way or another) but there's an alternative to giving in to that urge. Perhaps we're better off leaving it as-is. We can evaluate about this in some later stage of the process.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#135

Post by drran »

nanagojo wrote: post #102
toxik wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I as an open source author absolutely do not want Microsoft to get richer from using my code You are likely using the wrong license then.

Copilot doesn't comply with all open source licenses. Which one we should use then to protect our rights?

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#136

Post by drran »

arvindamirtaa wrote: post #103
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

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.

I'm open to new perspectives. But here's where I stand so far. If I learn programming from a book that is copyrighted and use a small snippet (for example, how to do a particular kind of sort) from it in my own program, am I violating a copyright?

Read the book copyright statement and license. Some books have separate license for examples.

However, if you copy an example from a book into a code, then very often it's fair use, but if you copy the same example from a book into your own book, then very often it's a copyright infringement, unless explicitly allowed by the book license.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#137

Post by sombremesa »

sweetheart wrote: post #128
drran wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"AI training" is not a "training" in human sense. It's algorithm. > In other words, I don't think using of an algorithm on copyrighted code violates copyright It does.

Do you have a link discussing how it does? Ive only seen an article from a lawyer explaining how it doesn’t, in their professional opinion.

Regardless of the nuances of that point, GitHub copilot violates copyright because the content it was trained on still lives in it, and you can get it to spit it out verbatim.

If I were a master artist, my existence wouldn’t violate copyright, but I would certainly be violating it every time I chose to reproduce a copyrighted work for a client.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#138

Post by wildbook »

carschno wrote: post #25
ALittleLight wrote: post #23

There's an interesting section that talks about what you want from a pair programmer - questioning your assumptions, spotting errors, debating design with you, etc, and how Copilot doesn't do this, but instead just spits out the code it thinks you want. That made me think that, when using Copilot, the human is actually the copilot. You're the one spotting bugs, picking different designs, and so on. I also think the d…

Something like the Stackoverflow Importer for Python? https://github.com/drathier/stack-overflow-import

It exists: https://github.com/MythicManiac/copilot-import

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#139

Post by UncleMeat »

sweetheart wrote: post #128
drran wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"AI training" is not a "training" in human sense. It's algorithm. > In other words, I don't think using of an algorithm on copyrighted code violates copyright It does.

Do you have a link discussing how it does? Ive only seen an article from a lawyer explaining how it doesn’t, in their professional opinion.

Welcome to software engineering, where engineers have extremely strong and fixed opinions about all sorts of fields that are completely disconnected from software engineering.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#140

Post by UncleMeat »

hvis wrote: post #122
onion2k wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did "instructions" recreate this? https://twitter.com/stefankarpinski/status/14109710611816816...

Yes. Models are much much smaller than compressed training sets, making it very clear that they are doing more than just compressing the entire training set.
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