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Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

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Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#91

Post by garmaine »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #72
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

Copilot was made from stealing code on Github, ignoring the licenses set on repos such as e.g GPLv2, using AI as a trick to license-launder code. Copilot has announced their plans to become a paid service. So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company.

Copilot generally (excepting rare cases where it produces snippets verbatim) does not steal code. The GPL restricts distribution, not usage. And (to my knowledge) no open-source license restricts learning from code. I cannot see anyone who doesn't want others to learn from their code ever release code as open-source.

The GPL very much restrict derivative works. It's the whole point of the GPL. "Usage" in the context of the GPL does not have the meaning you are using.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#92

Post by shadeslayer_ »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #31
NegativeLatency wrote: post #3

Well if they ever get it right I guess I could always become an electrician (this is not a dig on electricians, it seems like a fun trade, that or under water welding)

Get into a union early if you want to become a union electrician. The low number unions usually pay the most. That is if you can get in. The test is a high school equivelency exam, at least for local 6, but hundreds of guys are taking the exam. You can't miss one question. 1/2 of the hiring process is the interview. (They used to accept only electrician's sons, like the police/fire departments; but that has changed.)…

This is why I love HN.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#93

Post by nmfisher »

toxik wrote: post #83
FeepingCreature wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot generally (excepting rare cases where it produces snippets verbatim) does not steal code. The GPL restricts distribution, not usage. And (to my knowledge) no open-source license restricts learning from code. I cannot see anyone who doesn't want others to learn from their code ever release code as open-source.

I as an open source author absolutely do not want Microsoft to get richer from using my code, code that I contributed or published for the benefits of other developers. They took my work, removed my name and trained an advanced pattern matching technique to try to make code like mine and then sell it. It’s so obviously ethically questionable it’s insane. Developers are absolutely pissed about this, and rightfully so.

Did you license your code under terms that allowed them to do so?

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#94

Post by yreg »

onion2k wrote: post #70
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

Copilot was made from stealing code on Github, ignoring the licenses set on repos such as e.g GPLv2, using AI as a trick to license-launder code. Copilot has announced their plans to become a paid service. So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company.

So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company. This is just business as usual for tech companies though. How many Silicon Valley businesses built their products on top of open source projects without contributing much back? Heck.. how many YC companies do t…

Shaming companies for using OpenSSL for free without any strings attached seems to go against the idea of free software.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#95

Post by tvirosi »

onion2k wrote: post #70
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

Copilot was made from stealing code on Github, ignoring the licenses set on repos such as e.g GPLv2, using AI as a trick to license-launder code. Copilot has announced their plans to become a paid service. So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company.

So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company. This is just business as usual for tech companies though. How many Silicon Valley businesses built their products on top of open source projects without contributing much back? Heck.. how many YC companies do t…

There's a difference between building a product using open source and not contributing back, and copying licensed code into your own codebase. One is rude and the other is straight up illegal.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#96

Post by qiqitori »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

Copilot was made from stealing code on Github, ignoring the licenses set on repos such as e.g GPLv2, using AI as a trick to license-launder code. Copilot has announced their plans to become a paid service. So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company.

The following is just my opinion, and I'm not that hard-set in case anyone has any nice arguments.

Generally, when you (for example) use GANs to learn from (copyrighted) images and generate new images, I see no reason why those new images should inherit any copyrights from the original image if the resulting images look sufficiently different. (Obviously, if you just train on 1000 images of Mickey Mouse, you'll get mostly Mickey Mouse, and you wouldn't get the copyright.)

Humans work the same way -- artists train on existing images or subjects/etc., and unless they produce something that looks similar to an existing image, they get the copyright.

In other words, I don't think training on copyrighted code violates copyright (UNLESS the license explicitly disallows that; maybe there will be licenses for that soon). However, if generated code is too similar to existing code, then that could be a copyright violation. In other words, the user is responsible to make sure they aren't violating any copyrights from their usage of Copilot. It may be useful to build plagiarism checkers for this purpose. (Or maybe they already exist.)

If you use Copilot, I recommend keeping track of things that were generated automatically, just so you can go back to change those components if necessary.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#97

Post by onion2k »

yreg wrote: post #94
onion2k wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company. This is just business as usual for tech companies though. How many Silicon Valley businesses built their products on top of open source projects without contributing much back? Heck.. how many YC companies do t…

Shaming companies for using OpenSSL for free without any strings attached seems to go against the idea of free software.

No part of any open source license says I have to like companies that extract billions in value from open source projects without contributing back to the project. My opinion is simply that once you get to a few million in revenue putting a few thousand back in to the code that got you there is a decent thing to do, and if you don't then you're not very nice.

The fact that the license allows you to do this is great; the fact that people actually do is not.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#98

Post by dgb23 »

onion2k wrote: post #70
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

Copilot was made from stealing code on Github, ignoring the licenses set on repos such as e.g GPLv2, using AI as a trick to license-launder code. Copilot has announced their plans to become a paid service. So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company.

So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company. This is just business as usual for tech companies though. How many Silicon Valley businesses built their products on top of open source projects without contributing much back? Heck.. how many YC companies do t…

> We can't reasonably claim there's anything wrong with a company building a product on the back of open source work when literally all of us do that as well.

We cannot (are not allowed to, by law, contracts etc.) open source everything we write. I think the most important contribution is not funding but to contribute in some way or another for most.

Having said that, it is disheartening that important projects lack even basic funding. Is this getting better? There are also success stories that pop up with funding and donations becoming easier.

For companies open source funding can be a major thing to improve their relationship with the wider software community. It is a signal that they are interested in sustainability of software and collaboration. And it is a form of recognition for the authors.

Edit:

I just realized we are talking about GitHub here. They are a major contributor to open and free software as they provide free hosting and tooling. I'm not saying this absolves them of everything they do with Copilot, but I'm very, very happy to have such an amazing service freely available and many others are too.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#99

Post by onion2k »

tvirosi wrote: post #95
onion2k wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company. This is just business as usual for tech companies though. How many Silicon Valley businesses built their products on top of open source projects without contributing much back? Heck.. how many YC companies do t…

There's a difference between building a product using open source and not contributing back, and copying licensed code into your own codebase. One is rude and the other is straight up illegal.

The code doesn't exist in Copilot. The instructions for how to recreate the code does. On a very pedantic level those are not the same, but it probably is enough to argue that the product is 100% legal.

It is still quite rude to do that though.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#100

Post by rightbyte »

wonnage wrote: post #53

It's mentioned towards the end of the blogpost, but I think the real blessing in disguise might be the ability to identify similar code from elsewhere on Github and linking to it. Too many libraries have you wading through pages of documentation in search of a single usage example. Some other ideas: - Look for libraries with similar code and suggest them - Deobfuscating minified variable names? Or just suggesting bet…

I would be happy of my IDE could throw me to the relevant topic on cppreference.com from a type or variable. Or still show the function signature after I started typing the function arguments.

There are so much low hanging fruit it is silly.

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