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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

#41

Post by goodpoint »

gdsdfe wrote: post #2

Nothing is free people! ... People are outraged by GitHub but nobody is going after Facebook or Google for training their AIs on your personal data. Facebook used your face to train some algos, google your personal emails etc.

> nobody is going after Facebook or Google

A lot of people dislike them and minimize their use.

More importantly, we are seeing a bait-and-switch. People agreed on GitHub storing, showing and indexing their code and issues, not using the code for Copilot, regardless of what the fine print in the usage agreement says.

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

#42

Post by joe_the_user »

ineedasername wrote: post #38

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 da…

The difference appears when copyrighted material is repeated verbatim. And because it's obvious Github has no control over how much copyrighted material is being repeated verbatim. And that copyrighted material is intended to be used by commercial companies who copyright their own material and don't want to have their copyright challenged.

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

#43

Post by ineedasername »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #32
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.

>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…

But it would still potentially have used code not licensed for commercial use as a data set for a commercial product, which is problematic.

GitHub really needs to clarify which code was allowed for inclusion here. Until then we're can only speculate And enumerate potential scenarios.

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

#44

Post by rikroots »

seph-reed wrote: post #10

Well, for the most part my code isn't going to do anyone a ton of good. I don't use much in the way of popular frameworks, but I also guess this means I'm gonna be out of a job for not writing "normal" enough code at some point. Time to move on to the carbon age I suppose.

I don't know - I think a variety of coding approaches may make for some interesting AI code suggestions in the next year or two.

I do pity the poor algorithm that has to parse sense into my coding idiosyncrasies.

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

#45

Post by firebaze »

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)

Downvoted. There's a difference between "commercial purpose" and "global player", and Microsoft crossed another line. One of many.

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

#46

Post by shakow »

gdsdfe wrote: post #2

Nothing is free people! ... People are outraged by GitHub but nobody is going after Facebook or Google for training their AIs on your personal data. Facebook used your face to train some algos, google your personal emails etc.

Because people accept a EULA when they give their data to FB or Google. Github is exploiting a grey area to leverage a big fat chunk of GPL (or other) licensed code in ways that are perceived to be a technically probably legal, but morally very ambiguous understanding of these licenses.

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

#48

Post by t0mas88 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #32
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.

>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 the judge would really not care about the "we did not copy it, we made an algorithm that created the exact code" technicality. It's their job to see through such things and consider the case at a higher level.

So the judge would look at two pages of exactly the same code and then decide whether the "not really copied" part is big enough to be considered an original work or not. If it is big enough it is a copyright violation. Nobody cares that you used an algorithm in between, you took the original as an input and ended up with exactly the same thing as an output, copyright violation, case closed...

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

#49

Post by seph-reed »

rikroots wrote: post #44
seph-reed wrote: post #10

Well, for the most part my code isn't going to do anyone a ton of good. I don't use much in the way of popular frameworks, but I also guess this means I'm gonna be out of a job for not writing "normal" enough code at some point. Time to move on to the carbon age I suppose.

I don't know - I think a variety of coding approaches may make for some interesting AI code suggestions in the next year or two. I do pity the poor algorithm that has to parse sense into my coding idiosyncrasies.

Perhaps. My experience with ML is that it's more like:

* a person that follows popular trends than

* a person who finds/dissects clever/unique solutions to add to their tool belt

Honestly, I'm pretty sure ML hates my guts. Anything I've ever used involving it ends up burying my voice and slowly trying to etch away that parts of me that aren't normal enough.

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

#50

Post by yongjik »

There may be discussions to be made about licenses, but "to watch people cheer at having their work and time exploited by a company worth billions" is a disappointingly myopic take, especially from a developer.

Information that is aggregated and organized for easy retrieval is worth more than the sum of individual bits of information. I thought that was common sense.

We might as well complain that billionaire supermarket chains are pocketing all the profit while not growing a single potato by themselves.

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