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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#761

Post by namose »

ShamelessC wrote: post #755
bayindirh wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because copilot is violating the terms I put for my code. My code is GPL. It cannot be put into projects with incompatible licenses. That’s my code, and I share it with strings attached. You can’t just copy my code and sell to other parties no strings attached. If that’s fine and dandy, Microsoft should also train Copilot on their source code repositories, so we can use that knowledge, too.

I guess I've just never had to work with GPL code before, but the complaints essentially only seem to be coming from coders who like this style of open source where you still get to make it kind of a pain in the ass to actually use your software. I guess you have the right to do this, but it doesn't mesh at all with why I personally contribute (without any expectation of attribution), which is that (much like stack o…

But GPL owners aren’t seeking rent, so you’re just asking those who believe all code should be open source to unilaterally let large companies use all their code, while they reap no such benefits from the large companies

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#762

Post by bayindirh »

ShamelessC wrote: post #755
bayindirh wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because copilot is violating the terms I put for my code. My code is GPL. It cannot be put into projects with incompatible licenses. That’s my code, and I share it with strings attached. You can’t just copy my code and sell to other parties no strings attached. If that’s fine and dandy, Microsoft should also train Copilot on their source code repositories, so we can use that knowledge, too.

I guess I've just never had to work with GPL code before, but the complaints essentially only seem to be coming from coders who like this style of open source where you still get to make it kind of a pain in the ass to actually use your software. I guess you have the right to do this, but it doesn't mesh at all with why I personally contribute (without any expectation of attribution), which is that (much like stack o…

When actually using the software means "taking it, adding it to a commercial software and never telling anyone, incl. the developer of the original code, and not giving any attribution whatsoever, and earning money over that piece of code", yes GPL makes it hard. It's by design, and this is why I license anything and everything I put in the open GPLv3+.

If anyone contributes to a GPL software, they're clearly attributed. Moreover, Git makes this attribution irrevocably visible. Before that patches were sent in with mails, and mailing lists were open, so attribution was also visible back then. So, no, GPL makes attribution visible, and irrevocable, by design.

GPL doesn't seek rent over any idea. It forces ideas to stay open, forces you to put your improvements back in the open. You'll be attributed, your code will be in the open all the time, and nobody can grab and run your code and hide into its software to make any kind of unjust profit, which makes "Open Source" coders visibly and literally wince and cringe, because they can't grab and paste a piece of code and make their days easier.

Again, this is by design.

Sorry if my viewpoint towards your view is apathetic, but the whole field is already infested with programmers who only understand being able to copy and paste code left and right to develop software as a useful metric.

It's not about Microsoft, it's just about being honoring a license. A case-tested, lawyer written, trusted license which many developers chose for licensing their work. It's a breach of contract, plain and simple.

As I said elsewhere, some of the code I'm writing is backed by papers. I don't obfuscate my papers to prevent anyone from implementing it, but if I open my reference implementation as GPL, this is because I don't want someone to grab it and run with the code, change it a little, put into a closed source program and call the idea theirs, possibly patenting it in the process.

I have a serious piece of research, my Ph.D. actually, and I'm still developing the code powering the whole idea. I was planning to open it under GPL license, to force its evolution in the open, but I understood that people don't appreciate that. So, probably I won't open the code. Binaries maybe. Highly obfuscated, protected binaries, probably.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#763

Post by throwaway675309 »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #643
jazzyjackson wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was just published as a public good it would probably be as illegal as sci-hub I consider the $10/m as a donation to the microsoft legal defense fund to allow free access to accumulated knowledge.

To allow access to a service that grants you the accumulated knowledge's output in small bits. I'm all for a world where these tools help developers, but i'm not here for a system that isn't open. I want to own my tools. Copilot is a bit like musicians paying a monthly fee for access to a loop library. Except all the loops are rip-offs of other peoples hard work and there's no effort to compensate them. If I made an…

"Except all the loops are rip-offs of other peoples hard work and there's no effort to compensate them."

Except all the loops are smaller pieces of larger loops which you as the developer than mix together in new ways to create your application. FTFY.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#764

Post by bayindirh »

zarzavat wrote: post #758
bayindirh wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An automated system will devour all my code, which is under a case-tested copyleft license, and regenerate its parts in any place, without respecting the license terms, and call it "fair use". I have two questions: 1. Why have licenses, then? 2. What if I just use leaked sources of closed source software and call it fair use?

1. Why have licenses, then? The default under copyright law is that any substantial copy is infringement. A license is a legal document that grants someone permission to use a work that they otherwise would not have had. However the law also gives its own permissions to use a work - it defines what is unlawful infringement and what is lawful fair use. The code snippets that copilot generates look more like fair use t…

> As pointed out upthread, if it the source code is leaked then there may be trade secret protections. The GPL specifically allows the code to be posted online, so by design it is not secret.

The reverse maybe true. I may be GPL'ing a code to prevent a useful algorithm from being buried deep inside a commercial code with an incompatible license. What makes it a "trade secret" level code? I have a 25 line algorithm which is worthy of its own paper. What if I open its reference implementation with AGPLv3+?

I have no problems with you reading the paper, and implementing it. I don't obfuscate my papers, but I put the implementation out with AGPLv3+. You can't use that in a codebase with an incompatible license. I expect and want you respect the license of my implementation.

> The code snippets that copilot generates look more like fair use than infringement. They are small, adapted to the destination context, and usually not direct copies of one source but more of an average of many different sources. And usually the programmer does not keep the suggestion that copilot suggests unmodified - the programmer does their own editing of the snippet afterwards to further tune it to the surrounding context.

Emphasis mine. First, there's no consensus on fair use, yet. Second they may be direct copies of the code. Third, they're remixed with other code pieces, which makes it a derivative work of many code pieces at once, then lastly, programmer re-derives the derived work. Which is clearly a derivative of GPL code, which brings in GPL license with itself (if what copilot derives the code from GPL licensed repositories, which it does).

I have no problem with Copilot as a technology. I have no problems with other licenses, which are not breached when used by Copilot and derived and used. The point which makes my blood boil is copilot using this GPL corpus, and don't admitting it publicly, breaching the terms of GPL en masse, and outright ignoring it. Then feeding this GPL derived code to any and all projects which pay for a copilot membership, and calling it a day.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#765

Post by bayindirh »

ellyagg wrote: post #683
nickjj wrote: post #535

This might be overreacting but is there a way to opt-out of Copilot using your code in open source repos? It feels morally wrong to me that I can spend thousands of hours working on projects on my own free will but then a company can sell the code I wrote to others in the form of snippet completion as a service. In fact they end up selling your code back to yourself if you plan to use the service. If the answer is no…

Well, I hope your viewpoint doesn't win the day, because making code as freely shareable and remixable as possible is a huge boon for humanity.

Well, I hope your viewpoint doesn't win the day, because breaching GPL left and right to make some developers life easier opens huge cans of worms.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#766

Post by namose »

janosdebugs wrote: post #355

It'd be nice to see some proof here. Copyright is not absolute and does not extend, for example, to things that have no creativity in them. There are only so many ways to write a for loop or an if condition. Training an ML model from a large body of code IMHO violates copyright no more than any of us reading code and learning from it, as long as GH Copilot doesn't spit out code that's exactly the same as something al…

https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309?s=2...

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#767

Post by namose »

dougmwne wrote: post #676
sirsinsalot wrote: post #672

Beware geeks with gifts. This is Microsoft. The question isn't "is it good?" but "Why are Microsoft offering it and how is it undermining everyone else?"

Microsoft will benefit from cheaper and more productive engineers.

If that’s their motive they should stop charging for it. Or, if they need to cover source costs, open source copilot code and allow people to host their own

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#768

Post by namose »

blitz_skull wrote: post #343

Man, people really do be angry that the public code they put on a public platform is being used publicly. Wild.

Wild that people who draw up licenses for their code which up until this point have been reliably enforced expect them to continue to be enforced!

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#769

Post by powerapple »

Why is it a bad thing? You either have people spending time reading code and learn every little thing and produce the same work in days, or have Copilot saves human life time for hours. Coding would be more efficient, it is a win-win for everyone in this industry, right? I know people attach to the code they write, but we all learn from books, and the result is common enough.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#770

Post by DJHenk »

throwaheyy wrote: post #740
nickjj wrote: post #535

This might be overreacting but is there a way to opt-out of Copilot using your code in open source repos? It feels morally wrong to me that I can spend thousands of hours working on projects on my own free will but then a company can sell the code I wrote to others in the form of snippet completion as a service. In fact they end up selling your code back to yourself if you plan to use the service. If the answer is no…

The Twitter thread’s title seems unnecessarily incendiary and clickbaity. I don’t buy that producing/synthesizing code snippets based off public repos is a problem. There’s nothing proprietary or original about eg. the syntax of a for-loop, or the boilerplate of setting up some JS framework MVC. Besides, it’s basically just a (semantic and contextual) search engine inlined within the IDE. Copyright infringement hasn’…

> There’s nothing proprietary or original about eg. the syntax of a for-loop, or the boilerplate of setting up some JS framework MVC.

Of course there is something proprietary or original about that. Why else would they need such an enormous AI to suggest it. Auto completing simple boilerplate was already solved in a much simpler way.

> Copyright infringement hasn’t taken place until the user activated the autocompletion and actually placed the code within their own and released their code containing the infringing code.

Copyright infringement takes place as soon as some company publishes/sells material without explicit license or permission. So not the moment the users hits accept, but the moment just before that: when the tool shows it to the user.

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