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Calling it “public” code feels like doublespeak. It’s most definitely NOT public domain code — it only happens to be hosted on GitHub and browsable (but not cop

Calling it “public” code feels like doublespeak. It’s most definitely NOT public domain code — it only happens to be hosted on GitHub and browsable (but not copyable) by people. “Source available for viewing” is very different from “public property” as the phrase is commonly understood: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_property https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_property

fragileone 5y ago
The word they're actually referring to here is "source available", and trying to use "public" is just to confuse people into thinking they're referring to public domain only.
- ghoward 5y ago
  Maybe they mean code that is in public (versus private) repos? And then use the word to make it seem like it's stuff in the public domain?
CyberRabbi 5y ago
Movies are “public” too. That does not mean you are allowed to use them for any purpose. The term “Public” does not have specific legal consequences in copyright law outside of something being “public domain” as you say.
- slownews45 5y ago
  You are allowed to watch them. Many moves take ideas from other movies, which took ideas from myths and earlier stories. In fact, I find modern movies highly highly derivative.
- planb 5y ago
  The question is: are you allowed to train a neural network on movies (e.g. For an automated color grading algorithm) and then sell that as a service?
  - CyberRabbi 5y ago
    The correct analogy would not be a color grading service but instead a service that produces supplementary content for movies their subscribers make.
BlueTemplar 5y ago
Interestingly, it is copy able... but only on GitHub ! ("forkable") That's some nasty walled garden terms... I wonder how much these kinds of ToS are actually legal ?
- swiley 5y ago
  Pressing that "fork" button might be illegal. It's certainly illegal to push after pressing it in many cases.
Hamuko 5y ago
>it only happens to be hosted on GitHub and browsable (but not copyable) by people. So would you say that it's publicly visible?
- sp332 5y ago
  Publicly visible, yes. Publicly available, yes. Public code, no.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    "Public code" is not a defined term. It's not short for "public domain code".
  - frumper 5y ago
    If you post your code to the public, I wouldn't be shocked if people copy it verbatim without regard to license. I'm not suggesting that is a proper thing to do, just accepting that it can happen when I post code.
blibble 5y ago
I guess leaked copies of the NT kernel source on github are now "public" in the eyes of MS?
prettygood 5y ago
Not copyable by people, but we can go through the code, learn from it and then use that knowledge to improve our coding skills. Isn't that what autopilot is doing here? The system is merely learning how to code, and then applying it's learnings on other programming problems. It's not like it's writing software to specifically compete with other programs.
- hellcow 5y ago
  Not when it outputs large sections of unique code verbatim, as it's been shown to do.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    If it's large sections, that can be fixed by either licence attribution or result filtering. That's at best a technical issue. What way too many people claim, however, is that the machine isn't even allowed to look at GPL'ed code for some reason, while humans are. I'd like to learn the reasoning behind that.
    - ssivark 5y ago
      I think result-filtering (based on license of search results) is gnarly enough, and likely computationally intensive, so as to break the whole feature. But it would be interesting to see if that can be crafted to fix the shortcomings of the ML model.
    - thomasahle 5y ago
      > What way too many people claim, however, is that the machine isn't even allowed to look at GPL'ed code for some reason, while humans are. Why would those be the same thing? It's a matter of scale. Just like how people are allowed to read websites, but scraping is often disallowed.
      - qayxc 5y ago
        > Just like how people are allowed to read websites, but scraping is often disallowed. Hosting code on Github explicitly allows this type of usage (scraping) according to their TOS so I have to ask again - why the sudden complains? Are we still talking about a shortcoming of the ML model, which very occasionally spits out a few lines of copied code or should we include search engines into this, because they do the exact same thing by design? robots.txt, for example, has a non-binding, purely advisory character as well and Common Crawl [0] (also used for training GPT-3) publishes a dataset that by definition contains GPL'ed code as well, no matter where it's hosted. So is that off-limits now, too? [0] http://commoncrawl.org http://commoncrawl.org
will4274 5y ago
Public and public domain are not the same thing. This code is public in the same way that Google indexes publicly available information on the internet.

fragileone 5y ago

The word they're actually referring to here is "source available", and trying to use "public" is just to confuse people into thinking they're referring to public domain only.

ghoward 5y ago
Maybe they mean code that is in public (versus private) repos? And then use the word to make it seem like it's stuff in the public domain?

CyberRabbi 5y ago

Movies are “public” too. That does not mean you are allowed to use them for any purpose. The term “Public” does not have specific legal consequences in copyright law outside of something being “public domain” as you say.

slownews45 5y ago
You are allowed to watch them. Many moves take ideas from other movies, which took ideas from myths and earlier stories. In fact, I find modern movies highly highly derivative.
planb 5y ago
The question is: are you allowed to train a neural network on movies (e.g. For an automated color grading algorithm) and then sell that as a service?
- CyberRabbi 5y ago
  The correct analogy would not be a color grading service but instead a service that produces supplementary content for movies their subscribers make.

BlueTemplar 5y ago

Interestingly, it is copy able... but only on GitHub ! ("forkable") That's some nasty walled garden terms... I wonder how much these kinds of ToS are actually legal ?

swiley 5y ago
Pressing that "fork" button might be illegal. It's certainly illegal to push after pressing it in many cases.

Hamuko 5y ago

>it only happens to be hosted on GitHub and browsable (but not copyable) by people. So would you say that it's publicly visible?

sp332 5y ago
Publicly visible, yes. Publicly available, yes. Public code, no.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  "Public code" is not a defined term. It's not short for "public domain code".
- frumper 5y ago
  If you post your code to the public, I wouldn't be shocked if people copy it verbatim without regard to license. I'm not suggesting that is a proper thing to do, just accepting that it can happen when I post code.

blibble 5y ago

I guess leaked copies of the NT kernel source on github are now "public" in the eyes of MS?

prettygood 5y ago

Not copyable by people, but we can go through the code, learn from it and then use that knowledge to improve our coding skills. Isn't that what autopilot is doing here? The system is merely learning how to code, and then applying it's learnings on other programming problems. It's not like it's writing software to specifically compete with other programs.

hellcow 5y ago
Not when it outputs large sections of unique code verbatim, as it's been shown to do.
- qayxc 5y ago
  If it's large sections, that can be fixed by either licence attribution or result filtering. That's at best a technical issue. What way too many people claim, however, is that the machine isn't even allowed to look at GPL'ed code for some reason, while humans are. I'd like to learn the reasoning behind that.
  - ssivark 5y ago
    I think result-filtering (based on license of search results) is gnarly enough, and likely computationally intensive, so as to break the whole feature. But it would be interesting to see if that can be crafted to fix the shortcomings of the ML model.
  - thomasahle 5y ago
    > What way too many people claim, however, is that the machine isn't even allowed to look at GPL'ed code for some reason, while humans are. Why would those be the same thing? It's a matter of scale. Just like how people are allowed to read websites, but scraping is often disallowed.
    - qayxc 5y ago
      > Just like how people are allowed to read websites, but scraping is often disallowed. Hosting code on Github explicitly allows this type of usage (scraping) according to their TOS so I have to ask again - why the sudden complains? Are we still talking about a shortcoming of the ML model, which very occasionally spits out a few lines of copied code or should we include search engines into this, because they do the exact same thing by design? robots.txt, for example, has a non-binding, purely advisory character as well and Common Crawl [0] (also used for training GPT-3) publishes a dataset that by definition contains GPL'ed code as well, no matter where it's hosted. So is that off-limits now, too? [0] http://commoncrawl.org http://commoncrawl.org

will4274 5y ago

Public and public domain are not the same thing. This code is public in the same way that Google indexes publicly available information on the internet.