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Anyone publishing anything on the Internet should expect this type of use case. If it is removed from github and republished via another site, there is absolut
by blihp 5y ago
Anyone publishing anything on the Internet should expect this type of use case. If it is removed from github and republished via another site, there is absolutely nothing preventing another service/company from doing the exact same thing (or 'worse'... i.e. imagine a learning system that can actually understand the code) when scraping the alternative location. It's not unusual for bots to be among the most frequent visitors to low traffic pages these days and they aren't all just populating search engines.
- yashap 5y agoA bigger concern for many is that if you USE copilot, you’ll unintentionally copy code with licences that your company really, REALLY does not want to copy. For example, here’s copilot copying some very famous GPL code: https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309?s=21 https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309?s=2... And basically every software company avoids GPL like the plague, due to its strong copyleft conditions.
- blihp 5y agoSure, but that's a different end of the issue than I was referring to. I was pointing out that just taking code off of github wouldn't avoid the use case. Any published code from any public source is likely to eventually be used this way by someone.
- yashap 5y agoYeah, I agree with your point that “if you publish content to the internet, expect it to be used in ways you don’t intend, or even permit.” Just pointing out that a lot of the concerns are not “GitHub is stealing my code for use in Copilot,” but “using GitHub Copilot in my proprietary software is a massive risk/liability.”