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FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

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Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#91

Post by spywaregorilla »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #67
davisr wrote: post #7

The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…

If I ever receive monetary compensation for violation of the license on my repositories, I will personally deliver it to you in cash. It won't happen. I have a feeling Copilot is more of a tool for publicity than for development.

That statement sort of depends on how important your repos are

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#92

Post by sangnoir »

xxpor wrote: post #13
davisr wrote: post #7

The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…

Software licenses have barely been tested in court, let alone how they apply to code injected and combined with other code via machine learning. You're extremely overconfident about how this will actually play out. For one, just because your code is covered by the GPL, it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable. It has to demonstrate creativity. That's why you don't have to worry about writing fo…

> You're extremely overconfident about how this will actually play out.

I'd argue Microsoft too, was/is overconfident about how this would play out. I would have expected a little more caution on selecting the training data.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#93

Post by Y_Y »

hartator wrote: post #51
davisr wrote: post #7

The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…

> Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. Some of us think is detrimental to humanity at whole.

Why not both?

Copyright certainly matters. It's a big deal legally and economicically all over the world.

Suppose that it's just a bad idea and shouldn't exist. Does that mean that I should release my code into the public domain? I think you could make a good case that even being totally opposed to copyright morally or pragmatically or otherwise, given that it currently is enforced in many places it's worthwhile to play along. For example, some people would prefer a world without copyright, but GPL their code, because it might prevent a greater evil.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#94

Post by spywaregorilla »

echelon wrote: post #31
api wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people who go nuts when you point these things out are FOSS zealots reacting to the idea that FOSS licenses should be adjusted to prevent billion dollar companies from co-opting it for profit.

Profit is fine. Building anti-competitive monopolies that don't share and that seek to own more and more of computing was an unanticipated side effect.

Isn't that exactly what a lot of open source licenses have permitted due to hiding things behind SaaS layers rather than distributing products?

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#95

Post by sobellian »

alpaca128 wrote: post #35
xxpor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software licenses have barely been tested in court, let alone how they apply to code injected and combined with other code via machine learning. You're extremely overconfident about how this will actually play out. For one, just because your code is covered by the GPL, it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable. It has to demonstrate creativity. That's why you don't have to worry about writing fo…

> it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable Microsoft did not just copy individual lines. They fed whole repositories into their model, ignoring the license (if it exists) even though they knew from the start that information generated by the model will be publicly available. Available usually out of context, but nonetheless - the scope of the input and intent are very clearly "everything" and "…

The search engine on Github also calls up entire pages of GPL licensed code verbatim. Does it run afoul of copyright?

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#96

Post by Karrot_Kream »

dylan604 wrote: post #79
gradys wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why you think training models on copyrighted text is illegal or copyright infringement or whatever else it might be?

My explanation will not be popular here on HN, but I'm never one to shy away. Especially when asked directly. Buying a book, buying an audio CD, or buying a DVD/Blu-ray is granting the holder permission to read,listen,view that product as a single instance. You can lend them out, but that's all you're really allowed to do with them. The text,audio/video is not owned by you to do with as you please. People obviously d…

> The fact that people feel like they can do anything without the common courtesy of asking for permission is troubling to me that we've lost something as a society.

I see this sentiment a lot in FOSS spaces but I don't really understand why. The role of judicial process _isn't_ to provide a guiding moral philosophy around social organization. Depending on the government in question that's either a role of government functions or isn't something that should be guided at all. The role of law often (and yes, not in all governments, but at least in the US) is to offer a contract between the state and the individual.

I understand the potential for abuse here in using Copilot to regurgitate licensed works without adhering to the terms of the work's license, but I'm not fluent enough in law to know if this is illegal or not. Calling out and specifically applying strict limits this practice is certainly something I'm sympathetic to, and I'm very curious to see what the courts come up with. But swayed by a moral argument I am not.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#97

Post by liamwire »

dylan604 wrote: post #79
gradys wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why you think training models on copyrighted text is illegal or copyright infringement or whatever else it might be?

My explanation will not be popular here on HN, but I'm never one to shy away. Especially when asked directly. Buying a book, buying an audio CD, or buying a DVD/Blu-ray is granting the holder permission to read,listen,view that product as a single instance. You can lend them out, but that's all you're really allowed to do with them. The text,audio/video is not owned by you to do with as you please. People obviously d…

> My explanation will not be popular here on HN How is this better than ’bring on the downvotes’?

Moving on, I’ll put this to you: you claim training a ML model against copyrighted text is in violation of the ‘permission’ granted by the rights holder. However, flip this on its head for a moment – that’s basically all human brains do. Clearly, the greatest writers of our time haven’t written their works in a vacuum. Rather, that historical reading and inspiration becomes sufficiently obfuscated that we deem something adequately creative enough to be granted its own copyright.

Fundamentally, how does Copilot differ, other than perhaps being a poor implementation? Is it by not being ‘adequately creative’ enough? Is there some future version you could envision that would be, or is it the principle you’re arguing against?

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#98

Post by necovek »

slownews45 wrote: post #39
blendergeek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is anyone building strong communities on AGPLv3 / GPLv3? I feel the momentum shifted towards Apache / MIT style licenses unfortunately. While the corporate momentum switched to Apache/MIT licenses, there are strong communities built on AGPLv3/GPLv3. * Nextcloud - file hosting (AGPLv3) * Source Hut - git hosting (AGPLv3) * StreetComplete - OpenStreetMap editing (GPLv3) * F-Droid - Free Software "app store" for andro…

(A)GPLv3 actually has seen some real growth corporate side -> it's used commonly by proprietary tech companies as sort of a poison license (Microsoft had some of these like SSPL). The way this works is all contributors are required to sign a CLA -> the corporate developer can then use their code under ANY license, and most importantly can integrate into propriatery products or sell to others. The code is then release…

> But anyone else would have to release their code.

Which I think is perfectly fair: you are getting a full product, and you can do with it as you please (including profit off of it), as long as you publish your changes too!

The fact that the original copyright holder has the rights to close it off for future developments is completely natural, and if you do not want to allow them to do that, don't sign a CLA and fork. Oh, there's a cost in maintaining a fork? Pick your poison then :)

To me what matters is that once you get the software, you have freedom to use and modify it. I am ok if you do not have the "freedom" to close it off. If you start being a bigger contributor than the original company, you avoid all of the problems with a fork, but you can't say you did not benefit from the original AGPL release.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#99

Post by hodgesrm »

xxpor wrote: post #13
davisr wrote: post #7

The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…

Software licenses have barely been tested in court, let alone how they apply to code injected and combined with other code via machine learning. You're extremely overconfident about how this will actually play out. For one, just because your code is covered by the GPL, it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable. It has to demonstrate creativity. That's why you don't have to worry about writing fo…

> Software licenses have barely been tested in court...

OSS licenses have been litigated and upheld. Can't supply details of my own experience for confidentiality reasons but plenty of plaintiffs have prevailed in suits about violations of OSS license terms. My guess is the numbers are higher than you might think because a lot of the cases end in non-public settlements.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#100

Post by antocv »

belorn wrote: post #6

An interesting initiative from FSF, through I suspect the answer the most of the question will be answered when someone attempts a similar projects in a more traditional copyright-restrictive area. As an example I would like to see is a Cosinger, where the AI is trained using songs on youtube and streaming services. With the final product, a user start to sing and the algorithm attempt to sing along and give the sing…

A Cosinger would be illegal unethical, profit killing, anti democracy and ultimately anti our very own freedom to own intellectual property. /s

The same difference as allowing Google to prosper while beating down ThePirateBay, another search engine.

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