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VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

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Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#801

Post by HDThoreaun »

albedoa wrote: post #684
dmitriv wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First comment does not sound constructive - are you interested in my opinion on (n)vim? I am not a legal, so can't comment on legal things. However, I have already responded elsewhere here that this feature has nothing to do with licensing or ownership and was added for those that want the attribution. I understand the desire to see anything Microsoft as bad and evil, but we are really just trying to make a better ex…

It was pretty obvious from your first comment that you were going to get creative with the definition of "constructive". > are you interested in my opinion on (n)vim? The first comment is three short lines. One of them is the extremely reasonable and relevant question of where else this has happened in VSCode. And you think that the commenter is wondering about your opinion on (n)vim? That is what you think they are…

They’ve done a commendable job responding. Please show some respect when people put themselves in vulnerable situations, otherwise the whole “devs respond on HN” thing will cease to happen.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#802

Post by martin-t »

artyom wrote: post #182

To everyone who bought the "developer-friendly" Microsoft of VSCode fame from a few years ago: this is what they forever did, and forever will do. This company has been pulling these tricks since the early 90s. If you fell for this once again, there's nobody else to blame but yourself.

"You can't make people care."

Not until they've personally been hurt by something.

Unfortunately I can't recall who said this, it was the beginning of a tech talk and it made something instantly click for me.

We have almost no way to influence both politicians and corporations because an individual informed vote gets lost in the avalanche of votes by people who don't care. The biggest lie a few hundred years ago was that "all men are created equal" told to the general population by people who owned slaves. The biggest lie in our generation is that we have democracy.

1) It's impossible to vote for what you really want because the choice is restricted to predefined options - political parties are only a few points in a highly dimensional space representing what people actually want.

2) Everyone votes on everything and every vote has the same weight. It's impossible to target your vote to one issue you researched deeply - it'll be lost in the noise of people who are voting about something completely unrelated but their vote picks a party which in turn affects your issue.

3) Corporations, especially in tech, have just as much influence as the government and they're little dictatorships. Not even their workers can influence their decisions directly.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#803

Post by graemep »

hirvi74 wrote: post #324
polski-g wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. That fake commit addendum means that the entire commit contents would not be under copyright protection. AI generated code is not currently copyrightable.

Outside this instance, how can one prove code was AI generated beyond a reasonable doubt? Also, do you (or anyone else) know how much AI/copied-code has to be modified for it to be considered independent? If AI generates code, and one just renames some variables/method signatures, then what?

Reasonable doubt is required in criminal cases,most disputes about whether AI or human wrote code will be civil cases.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#804

Post by AbrahamParangi »

storus wrote: post #133
rsynnott wrote: post #26

One fascinating thing about the whole AI phenomenon is how incredibly hostile it is to _standards_. Whether something works properly, or is ethical, or is true, no longer matters at all; all that matters is "pls use our AI". Microsoft spent literal decades rehabilitating their reputation. And then set fire to the whole thing in an offering to their robot gods. And it's not just them. There was a time that Google care…

It's a complete takeover of technically incompetent management that feels like it can finally execute their ideas to the fullest instead of relying on those pesky swengs with their obstructions, complaints and problems. We'll soon get the management utopia everywhere.

Most members of management were individual contributors beforehand. I say this just because it is remarkably common for people to assign malign intent or stupidity to people doing jobs that they themselves haven’t done and don’t frankly understand.

I’m not saying you’re wrong. In many cases you’d be right. I’m just saying it’s remarkable how much certainty people have even when it comes to things they know they don’t know.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#805

Post by rafael-lua »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #142
rsynnott wrote: post #26

One fascinating thing about the whole AI phenomenon is how incredibly hostile it is to _standards_. Whether something works properly, or is ethical, or is true, no longer matters at all; all that matters is "pls use our AI". Microsoft spent literal decades rehabilitating their reputation. And then set fire to the whole thing in an offering to their robot gods. And it's not just them. There was a time that Google care…

> Microsoft spent literal decades rehabilitating their reputation. And then set fire to the whole thing in an offering to their robot gods. Probably they thought the new generations forgot about how awful they were in the not so distant past. I think they set it all on fire because greed got the better of them again.

I'm old generation and almost forgot for a while. GitHub was good even on their hands at the beginning, C# is amazing, TypeScript is amazing, wsl2 is game changer (which includes the change in Microsoft's position about linux), vscode is amazing, microsoft great increase in presence on opensource was nice (rushstack for example), etc...

But well, they still have the garbage side, which seems to be spreading again.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#806

Post by graemep »

VanTheBrand wrote: post #209
Gibbon1 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that Co-Authored by Copilot means 'not under copyright'

Yeah the current guidance from US copyright office is that if it were said to be solely authored by copilot it would not be eligible for copyright. If it were said to be solely authored by human A (who happened to use co-pilot) the elements and arrangement of it not generated by co-pilot would be copyrightable. I’m not sure the copyright office has released guidance on attempting to register AI as a co-author I assum…

The Thaler case settled part of that: an LLM cannot be an author.

The guidance says its case by and case I can find no indication separation of elements is critical. Its more how closely you guide and correct the AI https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

You can go by US guidance if you only distribute the work in the US. Otherwise you need to he aware this varies elsewhere.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#808

Post by stravant »

artyom wrote: post #286
thiht wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but I’ve used VSCode for almost 10 years, got mad at this once, and disabled it instantly. This sucks, but maybe don’t overreact?

I'd like my tools to not have a time-bomb attached to them, no matter if it takes 10 years to explode. And honestly I think this case is just a perpetually clueless manager getting over-joyous with vibecoding (to the point of being marveled at changing two lines of code without blowing everything up). It's probably going to be reverted in the coming days. Which doesn't change the fact that it's a very Microsoft way o…

Feels like a poor philosophy to me. 10 years feels like plenty of value to get out of something before switching.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#809

Post by yubblegum »

mohamedkoubaa wrote: post #788
yubblegum wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a break. This was already happening with Web 2.0 and things like "microservices".

I know it's just that we are in an accelerated state of Putt's Law

Had to look that up:

Putt's Law: "Putt's Law: "Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand."

I suggest that this law does not give a complete description of what has been happening to software engineering in the past 2 decades:

Putt's Law does not address the (new) phenomena we first saw when 'blog hotness' and minimal effort frameworks permitted practitioners with little practical experience or hard gained knowledge to manifest technical capability and assert technical authority. The minimal amount of 'wit' required was access to a smart phone, wiki, or some blog, and you had complete juniors arguing with seniors about architecture, frameworks. AI is taking that to the extreme.

Putt's Law's relevance here is that prior to the past 2 decades of enabling tech and knowledge bases 'the clueless manager' had the metric of "older more senior more likely to be correct", and clueless juniors didn't have blogs or wikis or frameworks that required a handful of shell commands to install, and spinup a 'demo'. AI has made that even worse.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#810

Post by jayd16 »

xp84 wrote: post #289
storus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a complete takeover of technically incompetent management that feels like it can finally execute their ideas to the fullest instead of relying on those pesky swengs with their obstructions, complaints and problems. We'll soon get the management utopia everywhere.

It wasn’t AI that brought us Apple’s gray on slightly-lighter-gray UI standards, nor the 10,000,000 ••• menus that have infested every webapp in the past 10 years as an alternative to thoughtful UI design. We humans made everything shitty before we made AI.

What is it about AI where the discussion is immediately derailed with whataboutism? Like, are these actually good faith comments? What's the point of bringing up "well some other bad stuff already existed"?
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