GitHub scraped your code. And they plan to charge you • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by iotku » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

hbz65 wrote: post #7

iliekcomputers wrote: post #3

If you open-sourced code and allowed it to be used for commercial purposes, I don't see the point of being pissy about Github using it, I'm saying this as someone who's written quite a lot of MIT code. (And charging for a product which adds value to your developer experience and needs money to be run is not a bad thing)

“Free and open source, assuming I approve of the usage” is a common sentiment among people who paste Apache or MIT and don’t think about the ramifications. It’s increasingly common. I think this situation is slightly more complex but that sentiment is at the heart of a lot of pushback against things like this.

Dev: "Anyone can use my code for any purpose including commercial purposes."

$BigCorp: "I want to use to use Dev's code for commercial purposes as he has explicitly granted me the right to do so."

Dev: "Wait, no not like that."

As much as I am a proponent of permissive licenses (my favorite is the wtfpl), you have to pick your license wisely especially if you're going to be picky about usage (Be it by $BigCorp, government agencies, or other companies that you might not be fond of).

If you really want "full control" over your code you have to make it proprietary.

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

#32

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

chartreusek wrote: post #11

iliekcomputers wrote: post #3

If you open-sourced code and allowed it to be used for commercial purposes, I don't see the point of being pissy about Github using it, I'm saying this as someone who's written quite a lot of MIT code. (And charging for a product which adds value to your developer experience and needs money to be run is not a bad thing)

Sure, but there's still the license at play here. It's not like they trained it only on public domain/CC0 code. What happens when it verbatim outputs a significant amount of code that was originally MIT, or BSD, or GPL licensed without the appropriate attribution. It can create unintended copyright violations and potentially open people using it up to liability.

>What happens when it verbatim outputs a significant amount of code that was originally MIT, or BSD, or GPL licensed without the appropriate attribution

You would sue.

And then Github would argue that their algorithms did not spit out verbatim the code by copying but rather it generated code that looked exactly like the other code based on learning from millions of codebases. ¨

And then there would be lots of lawyers.

And then a judge would have to decide.

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

#33

Post by st_goliath » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

> Hi. I know you’re excited about copilot.

> ...

> It’s truly disappointing to watch people cheer at having their work and time exploited by a company worth billions.

Huh? Over the last few days that I've watched this "copilot" story unfold on various news aggregator sites, I've first seen people point out copyright and other issues with it, then the fast inverse square root tweet happened, and then more articles and tweets like this one and the discussion that we are currently having. But I somehow don't really recall anyone besides the Microsoft marketing department being overly excited about it. Did I miss something?

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

#34

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

seph-reed wrote: post #13

iliekcomputers wrote: post #3

If you open-sourced code and allowed it to be used for commercial purposes, I don't see the point of being pissy about Github using it, I'm saying this as someone who's written quite a lot of MIT code. (And charging for a product which adds value to your developer experience and needs money to be run is not a bad thing)

Frankly, I think the reason people are upset is because a tool that once revolved around sharing work with others has been bought by a super giant corporation and then all of that sharing is being turned into a means of putting the people who shared out of work. Or in the very least, cutting their salaries dramatically.

[deleted]

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

#35

Post by andrewjl » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

Here's the brutal and ugly truth: why isn't our personal data treated as private property? It's because those who write the laws governing its status either lack the requisite understanding or else practice a form of, to put it mildly, motivated reasoning.

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

#36

Post by JBorrow » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

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.

SUBSTANTIAL PORTIONS can mean the core five lines of some key algorithm buried deep in a 1000 line wrapper library with a bunch of language wrappers.

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

#37

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

seph-reed wrote: post #13

iliekcomputers wrote: post #3

If you open-sourced code and allowed it to be used for commercial purposes, I don't see the point of being pissy about Github using it, I'm saying this as someone who's written quite a lot of MIT code. (And charging for a product which adds value to your developer experience and needs money to be run is not a bad thing)

Frankly, I think the reason people are upset is because a tool that once revolved around sharing work with others has been bought by a super giant corporation and then all of that sharing is being turned into a means of putting the people who shared out of work. Or in the very least, cutting their salaries dramatically.

[deleted]

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

#38

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

Can't you host code on GitHub that is not "free" for commercial use? If GitHub scraped these projects then it's a problem.

Otherwise, Into honestly trying to have a conversation on this to understand the objections because I haven't made up my mind but struggle to see the problem. So pease consider the following:

if the code was not encumbered by restrictions I don't see an obvious problem with this. Using code or data or anything like that in the public commons for a meta analysis doesn't strike me as wrong, even if the people doing it make money off of that analysis.

If I scraped GitHub code and then wrote a book about common coding patterns & practices I don't think that would be wrong.

I used the Brown corpus and multiple other written word corpuses (corpi?) Along with WordNet and other sources to write my thesis in Computational Linguistics Word Sense Disambiguation, later applying it to my job, which earns me money. Is this wrong?

Public datasets have been used extensively for ML already. I don't see this as much different.

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

#39

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14

chartreusek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there's still the license at play here. It's not like they trained it only on public domain/CC0 code. What happens when it verbatim outputs a significant amount of code that was originally MIT, or BSD, or GPL licensed without the appropriate attribution. It can create unintended copyright violations and potentially open people using it up to liability.

So sue them and a court opinion can demonstrate where the line is and how much code can be replicated before attribution is required (and the product can be refined to ensure compliance). Innovation should push boundaries.

The product is already dead. It's not just Microsoft that would be violating the license but any company using the application and Microsoft can't shield them.

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

#40

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

hmfrh wrote: post #15

iliekcomputers wrote: post #3

If you open-sourced code and allowed it to be used for commercial purposes, I don't see the point of being pissy about Github using it, I'm saying this as someone who's written quite a lot of MIT code. (And charging for a product which adds value to your developer experience and needs money to be run is not a bad thing)

> 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…

Good point; if the code does not have a specified license then standard copyright terms apply and inclusion for commercial use should be verboten. It it's actually open source without commercial restrictions though, I don't see an ethical difference in using the code directly or for an meta analysis driving ML for enhanced code completion.