3 ms·

A compressed file containing Quake's source code would be covered by the copyright on Quake's source code. The compression algorithm would not. The algorithm

A compressed file containing Quake's source code would be covered by the copyright on Quake's source code. The compression algorithm would not. The algorithm cannot produce the plain-text copyrighted material without the compressed copyrighted material. Copilot has the ability to produce Quake's source code nearly by itself. And it's a work (not a person), so it can be seen as a derived work. Like a compression algorithm that sometimes tacks on the first paragraph of "50 Shades of Grey" at the end of files. I'm not a lawyer, but that's my opinion (admittedly, my opinion is softening each day). Plus, the purpose of the tool is to create code for inclusion in projects somebody will hold a copyright over, and they likely won't be the original authors. So it's output should be held to a higher standard than a compression algorithm or keyboard.

leereeves 5y ago
> Copilot has the ability to produce Quake's source code nearly by itself. Was it fed the Quake source code while training? Then it's not producing that code, it's just reproducing it, like a fancy (but imperfect) copy machine. I'm not sure it's accurate to say that the training source code is "compressed" in the parameters of the model, but certainly some approximation of the training source code is stored in the parameters.
- treffer 5y ago
  It is probably a stretch, but I think less of a stretch than saying "it just a machine that learned to code and randomly reproduced these 10+ lines of code". That has IMHO a probability of 0. So if I rule that out, where does it end up? What if we put this as the grown up ML brother of the chain of LZW, PPM, dictionary assisted compression (e.g. zstd) and various attempts at using neural networks for compression? I would not want to judge this - that's why I put up the AGPL idea. Or even unlicensed code. It would be a very interesting case to watch.
madsbuch 5y ago
> A compressed file containing Quake's source code would be covered by the copyright on Quake's source code. The compression algorithm would not. What? Where does the distinction between data and algorithm go with compression algorithms? In its most abstract form a compression algorithm is function `{0, 1}^n -> {0, 1}^m` such that n < m and the output string is the result of something previously encoded. Why can't the input string be the seed used to make the machine learnt model generate the Quake source code?

leereeves 5y ago

> Copilot has the ability to produce Quake's source code nearly by itself. Was it fed the Quake source code while training? Then it's not producing that code, it's just reproducing it, like a fancy (but imperfect) copy machine. I'm not sure it's accurate to say that the training source code is "compressed" in the parameters of the model, but certainly some approximation of the training source code is stored in the parameters.

treffer 5y ago
It is probably a stretch, but I think less of a stretch than saying "it just a machine that learned to code and randomly reproduced these 10+ lines of code". That has IMHO a probability of 0. So if I rule that out, where does it end up? What if we put this as the grown up ML brother of the chain of LZW, PPM, dictionary assisted compression (e.g. zstd) and various attempts at using neural networks for compression? I would not want to judge this - that's why I put up the AGPL idea. Or even unlicensed code. It would be a very interesting case to watch.

madsbuch 5y ago

> A compressed file containing Quake's source code would be covered by the copyright on Quake's source code. The compression algorithm would not. What? Where does the distinction between data and algorithm go with compression algorithms? In its most abstract form a compression algorithm is function `{0, 1}^n -> {0, 1}^m` such that n < m and the output string is the result of something previously encoded. Why can't the input string be the seed used to make the machine learnt model generate the Quake source code?