5 ms·

It's up to the end user to accept the suggestions.

by nojito 5y ago

freshhawk 5y ago
And it's up to the end user to evaluate the tool that makes the suggestions.
- Spivak 5y ago
  This is true but doesn't change the problem that copilot itself is potentially distributing unlicensed copyrighted material. This isn't necessarily a problem for you as a developer though.
croes 5y ago
Good luck checking every code line for license violations
- dr_kiszonka 5y ago
  There will be a VSCode extension for that.
  - croes 5y ago
    Same trust issue
    - atatatat 5y ago
      It's people for your lawyers to blame, all the way down! /s
      - croes 5y ago
        It's the same problem s with self driving cars, you gets sued. The company that provides the service/car or the the programmer/driver? I think the latter.
  - TheDong 5y ago
    It's impossible to automate checking for code license violations. If you and I write the exact same 10 lines of code, we both have independent and valid copyrights to it. Unlike patents, independent derivation of the same code _is_ a defense for copyright. If I write 10 lines of code, publish it as GPL (but don't sign a CLA / am not assigning it to an employer), and then re-use it in an MIT codebase, I can do that because I retained copyright, and as the copyright holder I can offer the code under multiple incompatible licenses. There's no way for a machine to detect independent derivation vs copying, no way for the machine to know who the original copyright holder was in all cases, and whether I have permission from them to use it under another license (i.e. if I email the copyright holder and they say 'yeah, sure, use it under non-gpl', it suddenly becomes legal again)... It's not a problem computers can solve 100% correctly.
    - dr_kiszonka 5y ago
      I should have added /s to highlight that I was being sarcastic. Sorry.
- duckmysick 5y ago
  SaaS idea: code linter, but for licenses.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Extend Fossology: https://www.fossology.org/ https://www.fossology.org/
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    That's one of blackduck's offerings: https://www.synopsys.com/software-integrity/open-source-software-audit.html https://www.synopsys.com/software-integrity/open-source-soft... At a previous job we had a audit from them, it seemed to not be too accurate but probably good enough for companies to cover their asses legally.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
user-the-name 5y ago
And it is completely impossible for the user to do so. So, the tool is worthless if you want to use it legally.
- nojito 5y ago
  Doubtful. You can be almost certain it’s being widely used or will be widely used shortly. The conversations around copilot are eerily similar to the conversations around the first autocomplete tools
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    That does not seem like a response to what I just said? I said that it is impossible for the user to check that the code copilot gives is OK, license-wise, and therefore, they can not be sure that it is legally OK to include in any project.
  - gnulinux 5y ago
    It's more like a writer using an autocomplete tool to write the first chapter to their novel.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      As someone who gets paid to write code (nominally) and has also written a few novels, I don't agree with this characterization. From what I've seen of Copilot, it's more like having a text editor generate your next sentence or paragraph^[1]. The idea (as I see it) is that you might use it to generate some prose "boilerplate", e.g. environmental descriptions, and hack up the results until you're satisfied. It's content generation at a fragmentary level where each "copied" chunk does not form a substantive whole in the greater body of the new work. Even if you were training it on other authors' works rather than just your own, as long as it wasn't copying distinctive sentences wholesale, I think there's a strong argument for it falling under fair use--if it's even detectable. On the other hand, if it regurgitated somebody else's paragraph wholesale, I don't think that would be fair use. Somewhere in-between is where it gets fuzzy, and really interesting; it's also where internet commenters seem to prefer flipping over the board and storming out convinced they're right to exploring the issues with a curious and impartial mind. I see way too much unreasoned outrage and hyperbolic misrepresentation of the Copilot tool in these threads, and it's honestly kind of embarrassing. As far as this analogy goes, it's worth noting that the structure of a computer program doesn't map onto the structure of a piece of fiction (or any work of prose) in a straightforward way. Since so much of code is boilerplate, I would (speculatively, in the copyright law sense) actually give more leeway to Copilot in terms of absolute length of copied chunks than I would for a prose autocompleter. For instance, X program may be licensed under the GPL, but that doesn't mean X's copyright holder(s) can sue somebody else because their program happened to have an identical expression of some RPC boilerplate or whatever. It would be like me suing another author because their work included some of the same words that mine did. ^[1] At least one tool like this (using GPT-3) has been posted on HN. At this point in time I wouldn't use it, but I have to admit that it was sort of cool.
flatiron 5y ago
As someone who does code reviews the thought the developer didn’t code the code submitted to be merged never would cross my mind.

It's up to the end user to accept the suggestions.

by nojito 5y ago

It's up to the end user to accept the suggestions.

freshhawk 5y ago

And it's up to the end user to evaluate the tool that makes the suggestions.

Spivak 5y ago
This is true but doesn't change the problem that copilot itself is potentially distributing unlicensed copyrighted material. This isn't necessarily a problem for you as a developer though.

croes 5y ago

Good luck checking every code line for license violations

dr_kiszonka 5y ago
There will be a VSCode extension for that.
- croes 5y ago
  Same trust issue
  - atatatat 5y ago
    It's people for your lawyers to blame, all the way down! /s
    - croes 5y ago
      It's the same problem s with self driving cars, you gets sued. The company that provides the service/car or the the programmer/driver? I think the latter.
- TheDong 5y ago
  It's impossible to automate checking for code license violations. If you and I write the exact same 10 lines of code, we both have independent and valid copyrights to it. Unlike patents, independent derivation of the same code _is_ a defense for copyright. If I write 10 lines of code, publish it as GPL (but don't sign a CLA / am not assigning it to an employer), and then re-use it in an MIT codebase, I can do that because I retained copyright, and as the copyright holder I can offer the code under multiple incompatible licenses. There's no way for a machine to detect independent derivation vs copying, no way for the machine to know who the original copyright holder was in all cases, and whether I have permission from them to use it under another license (i.e. if I email the copyright holder and they say 'yeah, sure, use it under non-gpl', it suddenly becomes legal again)... It's not a problem computers can solve 100% correctly.
  - dr_kiszonka 5y ago
    I should have added /s to highlight that I was being sarcastic. Sorry.
duckmysick 5y ago
SaaS idea: code linter, but for licenses.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Extend Fossology: https://www.fossology.org/ https://www.fossology.org/
- SahAssar 5y ago
  That's one of blackduck's offerings: https://www.synopsys.com/software-integrity/open-source-software-audit.html https://www.synopsys.com/software-integrity/open-source-soft... At a previous job we had a audit from them, it seemed to not be too accurate but probably good enough for companies to cover their asses legally.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

user-the-name 5y ago

And it is completely impossible for the user to do so. So, the tool is worthless if you want to use it legally.

nojito 5y ago
Doubtful. You can be almost certain it’s being widely used or will be widely used shortly. The conversations around copilot are eerily similar to the conversations around the first autocomplete tools
- user-the-name 5y ago
  That does not seem like a response to what I just said? I said that it is impossible for the user to check that the code copilot gives is OK, license-wise, and therefore, they can not be sure that it is legally OK to include in any project.
- gnulinux 5y ago
  It's more like a writer using an autocomplete tool to write the first chapter to their novel.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    As someone who gets paid to write code (nominally) and has also written a few novels, I don't agree with this characterization. From what I've seen of Copilot, it's more like having a text editor generate your next sentence or paragraph^[1]. The idea (as I see it) is that you might use it to generate some prose "boilerplate", e.g. environmental descriptions, and hack up the results until you're satisfied. It's content generation at a fragmentary level where each "copied" chunk does not form a substantive whole in the greater body of the new work. Even if you were training it on other authors' works rather than just your own, as long as it wasn't copying distinctive sentences wholesale, I think there's a strong argument for it falling under fair use--if it's even detectable. On the other hand, if it regurgitated somebody else's paragraph wholesale, I don't think that would be fair use. Somewhere in-between is where it gets fuzzy, and really interesting; it's also where internet commenters seem to prefer flipping over the board and storming out convinced they're right to exploring the issues with a curious and impartial mind. I see way too much unreasoned outrage and hyperbolic misrepresentation of the Copilot tool in these threads, and it's honestly kind of embarrassing. As far as this analogy goes, it's worth noting that the structure of a computer program doesn't map onto the structure of a piece of fiction (or any work of prose) in a straightforward way. Since so much of code is boilerplate, I would (speculatively, in the copyright law sense) actually give more leeway to Copilot in terms of absolute length of copied chunks than I would for a prose autocompleter. For instance, X program may be licensed under the GPL, but that doesn't mean X's copyright holder(s) can sue somebody else because their program happened to have an identical expression of some RPC boilerplate or whatever. It would be like me suing another author because their work included some of the same words that mine did. ^[1] At least one tool like this (using GPT-3) has been posted on HN. At this point in time I wouldn't use it, but I have to admit that it was sort of cool.

flatiron 5y ago

As someone who does code reviews the thought the developer didn’t code the code submitted to be merged never would cross my mind.