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Saying Goodbye to GitHub

ersei.net

171–180 of 450 posts

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#171
> Well, there just aren't many places I can go. I could go to GitLab, but they have their own fair share of issues and a disgusting UI/UX.

Not sure when was the last time the author checked them out, GitLab had a bad UI, but they've some improvements done during the recent times. IMO they are pretty OK now (still not as good as GitHub, that is I don't even think GitHub has good UI).

But SourceHut is a nice pick anyway :)

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#172
post #85

I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept. I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. Some Open Source licenses can be used in proprietary code, (MIT, BSD etc) with little more than simple attribution. Those developers chose that license for a reason, and I'…

Yeah on the one hand, isn't opening your source all about not really minding what happens to it after that? It's intended to be copied and used. On the other hand something about the term "laundering" kind of resonated for me. It's kind of like automated plagiarism where you spread your copying out over millions of people. But plagiarism only has meaning as an offense when the thing being copied isn't intended to be…

The term is being used here to imply that the generated code is somehow bypassing the licensing requirements, which isn’t necessarily true, and certainly isn’t a substantiated claim.

You can read licensed code, learn from it, and then write your own code derived from that learning, without having committed a copyright violation.

You can also read licensed code, directly copy paste it into your codebase, and still not have committed a copyright violation, as long as you did so in a way that constituted fair use (which copy-pasting snippets certainly would).

There’s no copyright issue here at all, and rationally speaking there aren’t any legitimate misuse of open source concerns either. If these people were honest they’d just admit to feeling threatened by AI, but nobody would care about that, so they just try to manufacture some fake moral panic.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#173
post #33

> The code that was regurgitated by the model is marketed as "AI generated" and available for use for any project you want. Including proprietary ones. It's laundering open-source code. All of the decades of knowledge and uncountable hours of work is being, well, stolen. There is nothing being given back. Leaving GitHub wont change that, OpenAI is training its models on every bit of code they can have, sourcehut, cod…

This whole open source thing is the biggest farce on planet Earth. Someone with a good knowledge about geeks and their behaviour concocted up this open source bullshit. So now talented people give their skill to the "whole" and they have to beg for contributions and donations to get by. And other geeks (not suits with ties) finance the ones they sympathise with. It's ridiculous. And faceless entities use their hard w…

This is such a misrepresentation of the open-source landscape. Yes, there are people working on open-source projects who beg for donations; but there also are open-source projects maintained by full-time employees (Eleventy, paid by Netlify; React, paid by Facebook; Angular, paid by Google; Next.js, paid by Vercel; Linux, paid by various companies; etc.). If a person thinks that his efforts will be better compensated elsewhere, he can always start looking for a paid job.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#174
post #5

Q: What about the social features of GitHub? I enjoy the discovery and star features. There just isn't any community like it. Where can I get that? It would be great if there was something that had the discovery & social aspects but was agnostic to the actual site hosting the code. Does something like that exist?

Maybe some day Software Heritage (https://www.softwareheritage.org/) will expose enough metadata between repositories so that people will be able to train their own recommenders for better discovery.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#175
I think the author hasn't considered this: I believe Copilot is trained on not only OSS on GitHub but also proprietary software. In terms of reproduction by Copilot, Copilot is not licensed to distribute OSS without license just as it is not licensed to distribute proprietary software. To any extent that OSS authors have a case against Copilot, so too do proprietary software authors, and likely moreso. If there is indeed a case against Copilot reproducing code, I'd expect it to be championed by well-financed corporations foremost.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#176
post #50

I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept. I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. Some Open Source licenses can be used in proprietary code, (MIT, BSD etc) with little more than simple attribution. Those developers chose that license for a reason, and I'…

You're allowed to make money from Free/OSS code, and plenty of companies have (Google, Amazon etc.), but they have always also at least given back something to the community to earn some good will. The situation with AI is new because it not only doesn't give anything back, it actually takes something away by threatening developers' jobs etc.

> they have always also at least given back something to the community to earn some good will

The busybox authors disagree: https://busybox.net/license.html

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#177

I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept. I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. Some Open Source licenses can be used in proprietary code, (MIT, BSD etc) with little more than simple attribution. Those developers chose that license for a reason, and I'…

> On the one hand we happily train humans on GPL code. Those humans can then write their own functions,but for trivial functions they're gonna look a lot like GPL Source.

Exactly. People are getting mad that Microsoft is making good money while the people who made all that free software available mostly did it for free (like in no money and no recognition). It can sound unfair but that's the deal. If you didn't want people or AI to learn from your code, open source was not the right option.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#179

I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept. I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. Some Open Source licenses can be used in proprietary code, (MIT, BSD etc) with little more than simple attribution. Those developers chose that license for a reason, and I'…

> I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept.

You're right. It's a politeness law some people have invented.

It's also a value people have, but that's for themselves. I like contributing to OSS projects. But, as soon as it's imposed on others, and there are punishments for disobeying, it's a politeness law.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well upthread the discussion changed to using a non-open license that prevents people from training AI on it. If you released software under such a license, someone re-uploading to Github would probably be violating their terms or yours. Regardless, Microsoft would probably remove the repo if you contacted them to let them know you're the copyright holder, and the software license is incompatible with their terms. It…

You shouldn't have to though, they have a responsibility all their own to check that they have the rights regarding someone else's copyright before they do what they want to do, rather than to do it anyway and then to wait for the rights holder to come to them. Copyright isn't 'opt in'.

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