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GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

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Re: GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

#191

Post by TheCoelacanth »

ineedasername wrote: post #144
zmmmmm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scale, intent and impact do actually matter in copyright. Copying a single API can be ok, and copying a million of them might not be OK. There's a reason for the word "fair" in "fair use". If a whole project was copied verbatim and the license violated I think everyone would agree that was wrong. So then is copying the same quantity of code across 1000 projects wrong? Is setting up a process and a system that does th…

Doesn't "fair use" limitations go out the window if the license is permissive enough to allow commercial use of the source code? As I've said in other comments, I still think this was the wrong way for GitHub to do this-- opt-in would have been much better-- but outside of licenses with commercial restrictions I'm not sure there's a license violation here, no more than scraping hundreds of public domain books to crea…

Fair use wouldn't matter if you were distributing the code in a way that followed the license, but the vast majority of permissive licenses require including the copyright notice, which they don't do. Only niche licenses like WTFPL would be permissible to use like this without invoking fair use.

Re: GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

#192

Post by rdw »

paulgb wrote: post #142
rdw wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The feature of TabNine that uses the "public" dataset is optional. It can also provide completions only based on local code. That optionality is important. Also, tabnine has a smaller scope; you type "var " and it suggests a variable name and possibly the rest of the line, like autocomplete has been doing for decades. Perfectly normal. My understanding of copilot is that you can type "// here's a high-level descripti…

> It can also provide completions only based on local code. That optionality is important. I don’t see how? The question is about the ethics of building such a tool, not whether anyone is forced to use it.

For many, the question is about the code quality as well. Having an AI write substantial chunks of code based on the work of "the average github committer" is being criticized as a problem for security, correctness, and understanding.

I think such arguments are a little overheated, but I do have my copy of tabnine configured to use only local code because depending on the full dataset (which is available over the could only IIRC) seemed like it was going to be more work than it saved.

Re: GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

#194

Post by gdsdfe »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #141
gdsdfe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your license means nothing if you can't defend it. If you paid for the service they wouldn't dare using your code regardless of the license.

> Your license means nothing if you can't defend it. It's okay to commit crimes if the victims are poor enough? (And yet what you've said is still true.)

I'm not saying it's ok, I'm saying nagging on HN, Twitter, etc. Won't solve any problem

Re: GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

#195

Post by eesmith »

dopaminefasting wrote: post #18
SamWhited wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you write MIT code you expect them not to strip your license out in derivative works. This is exactly what license are for and GitHub is blatantly violating it while people applaud.

Maybe read the MIT license before you grab the pitchforks: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all COPIES OR SUBSTANTIAL PORTIONS of the Software." Reusing a snippet doesn't require reproducing the MIT license. People who publish MIT software know they're basically giving their code out with basically no strings attached. However, GitHub should be careful with the GPL variety.

I don't interpret "substantial" here as affecting the 'de minimis' requirement for infringement, as that would require other language.

I'm pretty sure every court will instead interpret the word "substantial" in the MIT license as referring to the concept of "substantial similarity", which must be demonstrated in any copyright infringement case - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity

I distribute software under the MIT. "Basically no strings" != "no strings". I expect attribution for any derived program which has substantial similarity to my software.

I regard the presence of the word 'substantial' to indicate that the license applies to even modified forms of the software. As that Wikipedia link points out:

> Under the doctrine of substantial similarity, a work can be found to infringe copyright even if the wording of text has been changed or visual or audible elements are altered

Re: GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

#196

Post by vinay427 »

blibble wrote: post #93
superkuh wrote: post #92

If you're hosting at the free github service, or even paid, github did not scrape your code. They just accessed the information on the hardware they owned. HTTP wouldn't have to be involved at all. They could just look at the disks. Additionally, "The third-party doctrine is a United States legal doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties—such as banks, phone companies, internet…

believe it or not there's more countries in the world than the United States > "The third-party doctrine is a United States legal doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties—such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and e-mail servers—have "no reasonable expectation of privacy." this is definitely not the case for 100% of the rest of the world

It's not even true in the US. It's not a specific law, but rather a doctrine that is more of a vague legal idea as I understand it. There are always laws that don't follow it, such as the CCPA in California or several (narrower) approaches in other states, or even cases such as Carpenter v. US that rejected a possible application of it. This is without even considering more obvious holes in this concept including IP law, healthcare data, etc.

Re: GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

#197

Post by jraph »

ineedasername wrote: post #184
jraph wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My non-expert reading of the AGPL seems to indicate that using AGPL code in a commercial project is find as long as you don't change it Any restriction imposed by the GPL is also true for the AGPL. In particular, if you reuse some code from a (A)GPL project, even if you don't change the code, you must release your whole project under this license too, and give attribution to the author. For the LGPL, the same thing…

But AGPL & LGPL still don't prohibit commercial use do they? They impose obligations on those using the code to--potentially-- release their own code, but commercial use in & of itself isn't prohbited. Again, I think GitHub is going against the spirit of these licenses and should behave differently. What I'm trying to do in this discussion is simply explore the limitations within the letter of the license. Basically…

You can use GPL code commercially, as long as you release what needs to be released as GPL for the AGPL, that's probably your entire codebase.

You cannot use AGPL code in non-AGPL codebase or as a library in a non-AGPL. Same for LGPL, except you can use LGPL code as a dynamic library in a non-GPL codebase, as long as you redistribute modifications to the LGPL code.

You can sell *GPL software or services around it.

Re: GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

#198

Post by SergeAx »

> It’s truly disappointing to watch people cheer at having their work and time exploited

Maybe it's my information bubble, but I don't see anyone cheering. Currently Copilot churning out rather bad code. I am definitely would not use it. And my prediction about it that it will go like Tesla's autopilot for years.

Re: GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

#199

Post by spixy »

blibble wrote: post #75
hmfrh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you open-sourced code and allowed it to be used for commercial purposes Uploading it to Github does not transfer ownership or imply allowances for any use. If you upload it without a license it is a copyright violation to copy the code. Even with an MIT license it is a copyright violation to copy the code without attribution. > I don't see the point of being pissy about Github using it, I'm saying this as someon…

> People are probably angry because this is yet another case of a big multinational corporation abusing unclear or difficult to enforce legislation for profit. it's worse than that: it's Microsoft trying to completely undermine the concept of open source meanwhile: they're unaffected as their high-value proprietary code remains private and doesn't train the model

afaik GitHub Inc is still independent company and independent from Microsoft

Re: GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you

#200

Post by wizzwizz4 »

gdsdfe wrote: post #194
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your license means nothing if you can't defend it. It's okay to commit crimes if the victims are poor enough? (And yet what you've said is still true.)

I'm not saying it's ok, I'm saying nagging on HN, Twitter, etc. Won't solve any problem

And yet what problem was solved without people talking about it?
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