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GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

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Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#91

Post by youssefabdelm »

aunch wrote: post #46
youssefabdelm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried using the playground code completion to ask it to write a script for pyautocad that colors in a grid, it completed with a different library, pyautogui. Even after saying "import pyautocad" myself, the function it completed was pyautogui. I'm sure it's prob still very useful for people who care about the privacy tradeoff, but I've had more success with ChatGPT

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah the playground is a bit limited as it is for demo purposes. We are fans of ChatGPT and think that ChatGPT is pretty complementary to tools like Copilot and Codeium. ChatGPT is helpful for longer form exploratory questions from natural language while Codeium in its current form is great to accelerate your coding.

No worries haha, not at all easy nor cheap to build these things. I'm sure it's useful in most cases.

Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#92

Post by filereaper »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #79
Maxious wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot for Business includes an $500k indemnity if you turn on excluding suggestions that match open source code https://github.com/customer-terms/github-copilot-product-spe...

Good to know, but there are caveats: "GitHub’s defense obligations do not apply if (i) the claim is based on Code that differs from a Suggestion provided by GitHub Copilot, (ii) you fail to follow reasonable software development review practices designed to prevent the intentional or inadvertent use of Code in a way that may violate the intellectual property or other rights of a third party, or (iii) you have not ena…

>(iii) you have not enabled all filtering features available in GitHub Copilot

I was trying to find out what these exact filtering settings are but I land at this page [1].

The other links just download the Product Specific terms PDF again.

Not sure if this is an oversight or intentionally intended to be circular.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/configuring-github-copilo...

Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#93

Post by jonstewart »

Gigachad wrote: post #51
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the part of the Copilot EULA that indemifies users against copyright infringement for the generated code? If the model was trained entirely using code that Microsoft has copyright over (for example: the MS Windows codebase, the MS Office codebase, etc.) then they could offer legal assurances that they have usage rights to the generated code as derivative works. Without such assurances, how do you know that th…

Ultimately I think MS is right betting on the fact that this will not matter in the long run. All AI tools are trained on copyrighted data. The tools are too useful to cripple with restrictive laws written for a previous era.

Napster was right to bet on music being accessible online but oh wait

Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#94

Post by JoshTriplett »

Gigachad wrote: post #51
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the part of the Copilot EULA that indemifies users against copyright infringement for the generated code? If the model was trained entirely using code that Microsoft has copyright over (for example: the MS Windows codebase, the MS Office codebase, etc.) then they could offer legal assurances that they have usage rights to the generated code as derivative works. Without such assurances, how do you know that th…

Ultimately I think MS is right betting on the fact that this will not matter in the long run. All AI tools are trained on copyrighted data. The tools are too useful to cripple with restrictive laws written for a previous era.

Please by all means have those laws repealed. Until then, a license violation remains a license violation no matter how much AI you run the code through.

Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#95

Post by JoshTriplett »

fire wrote: post #73
JoshTriplett wrote: post #5

Sadly, "simple license management" here just refers to "who in your organization has a license to use this tool", rather than "where did this code come from and what license is it under". This tool remains the equivalent of money laundering for violation of Open Source licenses (or software licenses in general).

I don't understand why they aren't tagging data with license information and allowing users to use models that don't include certain licenses - seems like it would be the middle ground given the stance they've taken; like, "we don't think it's a problem, but if this makes you feel better you can use these other models that specifically don't train on gpl code, or whatever" I would prefer to see full license attributi…

> I would prefer to see full license attributions included in generated responses, though. Something that then also wouldn't be that difficult to generate a licenses file from?

Exactly. By all means build tools like this, but build them to actually comply with Open Source licenses. Provide a list of the licenses you don't mind copying from, and get back attributions with your suggestions.

Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#96

Post by JoshTriplett »

cothrowaway767 wrote: post #48
JoshTriplett wrote: post #5

Sadly, "simple license management" here just refers to "who in your organization has a license to use this tool", rather than "where did this code come from and what license is it under". This tool remains the equivalent of money laundering for violation of Open Source licenses (or software licenses in general).

It's an unpopular opinion which is why I'll cowardly write it under a throwaway account. Josh, I have a ton of respect for your work just btw. I can't help but see a headline like this and think "Okay the license argument has to be the top comment already". To me this whole thing is like pandora's box and it will not in any way be put back into the box. In the long run isn't arguing about the code it generates and ho…

I'm not saying "put it back in the box", I'm saying fix it to actually track Open Source licenses and provide attributions.

I'd have no objections to a tool that generated suggestions that came with attributions and license metadata, ready to insert into your project's file for third-party licenses. AI code suggestions are impressive.

I have objections to a tool that generates derived works from code without respecting the licenses of that code. For permissively licensed Open Source code, including that code without attribution deprives authors of their due credit (said credit often being how people get employment or funding). For copyleft Open Source code, including that code without using a compatible license violates the conditions upon which people made that code available for others to build upon and share. For proprietary code, including that code at all incurs legal risks.

Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#97

Post by JoshTriplett »

belorn wrote: post #89
Gigachad wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately I think MS is right betting on the fact that this will not matter in the long run. All AI tools are trained on copyrighted data. The tools are too useful to cripple with restrictive laws written for a previous era.

The pirate movement might have been a bit early for their time, but if AI happen to be the technology advancement needed for society to abolish copyright law then lets get it done. With everything from scihub getting blocked and people getting subscription fatigue, it is an excellent time for the restrictive laws to be replaced.

> The pirate movement might have been a bit early for their time, but if AI happen to be the technology advancement needed for society to abolish copyright law then lets get it done.

No argument there; that'd be a huge victory.

But until that happens, tools for "smart completions" need to provide appropriate licensing and attribution metadata.

Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#98

Post by ndriscoll »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #76
charcircuit wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So your company is okay providing all their source code to users? Nothing is forcing them to do that. If they are infringing they simply need to delete the infringing code and rewrite it by hand.

>> Nothing is forcing them to do that. If you use AGPLv3-licensed code in your codebase, you are agreeing to the terms of the license. Practically all corporate legal teams for companies that creates software will strictly prohibit the use of AGPLv3-licensed software, if not all GPL-based licenses.

Using AGPL code doesn't mean you agree to the terms. It means if you don't agree to and obey the terms, you don't have a license, which is copyright infringement.

Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#99

Post by danuker »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #95
fire wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why they aren't tagging data with license information and allowing users to use models that don't include certain licenses - seems like it would be the middle ground given the stance they've taken; like, "we don't think it's a problem, but if this makes you feel better you can use these other models that specifically don't train on gpl code, or whatever" I would prefer to see full license attributi…

> I would prefer to see full license attributions included in generated responses, though. Something that then also wouldn't be that difficult to generate a licenses file from? Exactly. By all means build tools like this, but build them to actually comply with Open Source licenses . Provide a list of the licenses you don't mind copying from, and get back attributions with your suggestions.

Suppose Copilot offered some pure-MIT licensed flavor.

Copilot could comply with MIT licenses by just outputting an MIT license with ALL the authors of code used in training.

Re: GitHub Copilot for Business is now available

#100

Post by JoshTriplett »

charcircuit wrote: post #67
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> This would not risk your company's IP. "The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3. It has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there." So your company is okay providing all their sour…

>So your company is okay providing all their source code to users? Nothing is forcing them to do that. If they are infringing they simply need to delete the infringing code and rewrite it by hand.

That's not how copyright infringement works. Great, you've stopped committing new infringements, but there's still a legal case over the previous infringements, for which you still need to provide appropriate remedy.

If the remedy for copyright infringement were just "oh, we got caught, guess we'll stop now", that would provide substantial incentive for people to violate licenses as long as they hoped they wouldn't get caught. The remedy for such violations needs to be substantial enough that it's not profitable to temporarily get away with.

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