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Feels like everyone is missing the point: Copilot will ultimately serve to weaken the arguments in support of software patents and copyright. That can only be

by na85 5y ago

Feels like everyone is missing the point: Copilot will ultimately serve to weaken the arguments in support of software patents and copyright. That can only be a good thing for society (though perhaps not for rent seekers).

MontyCarloHall 5y ago
Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this, given how copyleft and straight-up anti-IP so much of the open source community is. I think a lot more people on this site (and in the FOSS community in general) would be on board with Copilot if it respected viral licenses, e.g. if it had a way of inferring that the code it was copying verbatim were GPL-3 and warned the user that including it in their project would require them to GPL-3 their project as well.
- ImprobableTruth 5y ago
  But that's literally the issue. The only form of intellectual property that is being damaged by this is copyleft.
  - pabs3 5y ago
    Permissive licenses have requirements too, mostly attribution.
- noobermin 5y ago
  Honestly, that would fix every issue with it. The laundering of the license is the issue.
dimgl 5y ago
No no, we get it. Some people, like myself, still think that copyrights serve a purpose.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  You can say both, you know. That it serves a purpose and is too strong. And I notice you didn't say anything about patents?
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
It is certainly fascinating to see people start running away from "information wants to be free" and other Free Software principles full tilt when, all of a sudden, it's their livelihoods that are on the line. Unless my recollection is off, the GPL was never the goal of the original Free Software movement; it was merely a tool to get to the end state where all code becomes available for use by anyone for any reason without cost or restriction. I am reminded of a line from Terry Pratchett's Going Postal in relation to a hacker-like organization called the Smoking GNU, "...[A]ll property is theft, except mine...", which I thought was rather painfully apt in describing what FOSS evolved into after becoming popular.
- na85 5y ago
  >It is certainly fascinating to see people start running away from "information wants to be free" and other Free Software principles full tilt when, all of a sudden, it's their livelihoods that are suddenly on the line. Indeed. Everybody is a leet haxors when they're 14, it's 1998, and we're vying for +o in #warez on DALnet. We believed information really did "want to be free". Unfortunately some of those same kids grew up to create today's data barons and that old saying about getting someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding comes into play.
- snickerbockers 5y ago
  I can't speak to whether or not Richard Stallman was trying to make some 4-dimensional chess move to remove software restrictions by adding software restrictions when he wrote the GPL back in the 80s, but his original intentions are irrelevant in most cases since most people who license their code under the GPL do not consult with him or consider his opinions when they choose to do so.
- ImprobableTruth 5y ago
  Your recollection is off, majorly. I'd recommend looking up the origins of the FSF/GPL/Copyleft. The entire movement essentially got started because Stallman gave Symbolics his (public domain) Lisp interpreter, then Symbolics improved it but refused to share the improvements. "No restrictions" has never been the goal and to claim that they're egoistic hypocrites who are just scared for their own livelihood because of this is just an absurd strawman.
xunn0026 5y ago
Not really. Back when free software was strong, it would have been a good thing for society since Microsoft was selling software in boxes on actual store shelves. Now 'the edge' is already mostly open source. All the lock-in and value has moved into either infrastructure or in software you don't even get to touch since it runs in the Cloud and you just provide IO to it.
- na85 5y ago
  I think in this new era of endless security breaches at cloud firms and M1-style processing innovation we'll see a slow but steady migration away from the cloud.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
    I used to think like this but the total cost of ownership of on-prem is substantially higher, and it has its own security implications too.
    - foobar33333 5y ago
      I laugh at the thought that every company trying to host 20 vendor apps is more secure than having the company that wrote the apps host them. Self hosted apps get updated on a much much slower schedule and don't have access to the brains who built the software.
      - na85 5y ago
        Cloud based solutions are demonstrably not secure. The brains who built the software clearly can't keep it secure either.
  - dcolebatch 5y ago
    I’m going to take the other side of that prediction: Endless security breaches will encourage firms to do “less IT” themselves and accelerate the adoption of SaaS solutions (and PaaS, with no/low-code etc.) Also, perhaps not a massive driver but still, not for nothing: M1-style processing innovation (ARM) will see more developers creating for ARM servers, because they can, which will almost exclusively be run by the hyper scale cloud providers.
teflodollar 5y ago
If all copilot output was automatically GPL, I would think it’s fantastic. As it stands, it seems to undermine GPL the most.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  They should really have trained models based on the license, so a GPL-2.0-only model, 2+, 3+, 3 only LGPL 2.1(+), CDDL, MIT, et cetera. As it stands, the combined inputs leaves the model in the most murky of gray areas.
  - remram 5y ago
    Knowing which license applies is not sufficient if that license requires attribution. Or would you list the authors of every single input?
temac 5y ago
Not really unless you force the source code of proprietary software to be published. If you don't, copyleft has a role to play.
CameronNemo 5y ago
The arguments are already weak. The judicial precedent, however, is strong. Microsoft will continue to publish proprietary ML models and profit off them, at the expense of the corpus authors (us lowly laborers).
- remram 5y ago
  Can they profit? I don't think they will charge individuals, and organizations will probably stay away from this until the legality is worked out.
remram 5y ago
If this is not GitHub's point I don't see what we're "missing".
davidjytang 5y ago
In a society where software has no copyright, I guess we are gonna see less source code published.

by na85 5y ago

MontyCarloHall 5y ago

Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this, given how copyleft and straight-up anti-IP so much of the open source community is. I think a lot more people on this site (and in the FOSS community in general) would be on board with Copilot if it respected viral licenses, e.g. if it had a way of inferring that the code it was copying verbatim were GPL-3 and warned the user that including it in their project would require them to GPL-3 their project as well.

ImprobableTruth 5y ago
But that's literally the issue. The only form of intellectual property that is being damaged by this is copyleft.
- pabs3 5y ago
  Permissive licenses have requirements too, mostly attribution.
noobermin 5y ago
Honestly, that would fix every issue with it. The laundering of the license is the issue.

dimgl 5y ago

No no, we get it. Some people, like myself, still think that copyrights serve a purpose.

Dylan16807 5y ago
You can say both, you know. That it serves a purpose and is too strong. And I notice you didn't say anything about patents?

ThrowawayR2 5y ago

It is certainly fascinating to see people start running away from "information wants to be free" and other Free Software principles full tilt when, all of a sudden, it's their livelihoods that are on the line. Unless my recollection is off, the GPL was never the goal of the original Free Software movement; it was merely a tool to get to the end state where all code becomes available for use by anyone for any reason without cost or restriction. I am reminded of a line from Terry Pratchett's Going Postal in relation to a hacker-like organization called the Smoking GNU, "...[A]ll property is theft, except mine...", which I thought was rather painfully apt in describing what FOSS evolved into after becoming popular.

na85 5y ago
>It is certainly fascinating to see people start running away from "information wants to be free" and other Free Software principles full tilt when, all of a sudden, it's their livelihoods that are suddenly on the line. Indeed. Everybody is a leet haxors when they're 14, it's 1998, and we're vying for +o in #warez on DALnet. We believed information really did "want to be free". Unfortunately some of those same kids grew up to create today's data barons and that old saying about getting someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding comes into play.
snickerbockers 5y ago
I can't speak to whether or not Richard Stallman was trying to make some 4-dimensional chess move to remove software restrictions by adding software restrictions when he wrote the GPL back in the 80s, but his original intentions are irrelevant in most cases since most people who license their code under the GPL do not consult with him or consider his opinions when they choose to do so.
ImprobableTruth 5y ago
Your recollection is off, majorly. I'd recommend looking up the origins of the FSF/GPL/Copyleft. The entire movement essentially got started because Stallman gave Symbolics his (public domain) Lisp interpreter, then Symbolics improved it but refused to share the improvements. "No restrictions" has never been the goal and to claim that they're egoistic hypocrites who are just scared for their own livelihood because of this is just an absurd strawman.

xunn0026 5y ago

Not really. Back when free software was strong, it would have been a good thing for society since Microsoft was selling software in boxes on actual store shelves. Now 'the edge' is already mostly open source. All the lock-in and value has moved into either infrastructure or in software you don't even get to touch since it runs in the Cloud and you just provide IO to it.

na85 5y ago
I think in this new era of endless security breaches at cloud firms and M1-style processing innovation we'll see a slow but steady migration away from the cloud.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
  I used to think like this but the total cost of ownership of on-prem is substantially higher, and it has its own security implications too.
  - foobar33333 5y ago
    I laugh at the thought that every company trying to host 20 vendor apps is more secure than having the company that wrote the apps host them. Self hosted apps get updated on a much much slower schedule and don't have access to the brains who built the software.
    - na85 5y ago
      Cloud based solutions are demonstrably not secure. The brains who built the software clearly can't keep it secure either.
- dcolebatch 5y ago
  I’m going to take the other side of that prediction: Endless security breaches will encourage firms to do “less IT” themselves and accelerate the adoption of SaaS solutions (and PaaS, with no/low-code etc.) Also, perhaps not a massive driver but still, not for nothing: M1-style processing innovation (ARM) will see more developers creating for ARM servers, because they can, which will almost exclusively be run by the hyper scale cloud providers.

teflodollar 5y ago

If all copilot output was automatically GPL, I would think it’s fantastic. As it stands, it seems to undermine GPL the most.

CameronNemo 5y ago
They should really have trained models based on the license, so a GPL-2.0-only model, 2+, 3+, 3 only LGPL 2.1(+), CDDL, MIT, et cetera. As it stands, the combined inputs leaves the model in the most murky of gray areas.
- remram 5y ago
  Knowing which license applies is not sufficient if that license requires attribution. Or would you list the authors of every single input?

temac 5y ago

Not really unless you force the source code of proprietary software to be published. If you don't, copyleft has a role to play.

CameronNemo 5y ago

The arguments are already weak. The judicial precedent, however, is strong. Microsoft will continue to publish proprietary ML models and profit off them, at the expense of the corpus authors (us lowly laborers).

remram 5y ago
Can they profit? I don't think they will charge individuals, and organizations will probably stay away from this until the legality is worked out.

remram 5y ago

If this is not GitHub's point I don't see what we're "missing".

davidjytang 5y ago

In a society where software has no copyright, I guess we are gonna see less source code published.