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On top of that, I get the feeling that way too many programmers have a poor understanding of the actual value of their work. A single function, even if particu
by qayxc 5y ago
On top of that, I get the feeling that way too many programmers have a poor understanding of the actual value of their work.
A single function, even if particularly clever, elegant, or performant, doesn't have much value on its own. Sure, you might have thought about it for hours and struggled hard to get it just right, but that doesn't imply it's particularly valuable on its own.
A particular inverse square root function has no use outside a complete library or program. It's that added value (embedding it as part of something much bigger or complex) together with unrelated work (e.g. API calls, artwork, game design, etc.) that generates a product with actual value.
There are people who unironically try to argue that choosing variable names and expressing trivial mathematical relations in a particular way holds intellectual value worth protecting; even if it's just a single line of code.
Interestingly people cheered when Google won against Oracle and APIs remained "free". It'd be so interesting to take a peek into an alternate reality where CoPilot has been released by Google or Tesla(!) instead of Microsoft. My gut feeling is that the reaction would've been very different depending on the company that released the tool.
- thayne 5y ago> It'd be so interesting to take a peek into an alternate reality where CoPilot has been released by Google or Tesla(!) instead of Microsoft. My gut feeling is that the reaction would've been very different depending on the company that released the tool. I really doubt that. I do think the reaction would be more favorable if the project was itself open source.
- qayxc 5y agoWell, GTP-3 isn't open source, yet the Twitter-sphere was ecstatic about its code generation features. It isn't even new at all [0], [1], [2] - it's just getting exposure because people start actually using it. GPT-3 still forms the basis of Codex, which is the basis of CoPilot. None of these are Open Source and even if they were - what exactly do you think that would change? The models are black boxes, they are too big to even run on consumer level hardware, let alone train or finetune and the code of CoPilot is most likely just API calls, glue code, some post-processing and integration into VS Code. In short, no I don't agree that an open source product would've helped with people's opinion and it would've been irrational even, because there'd still be no difference in the core functionality and what people are complaining about. [0] https://sourceai.dev https://sourceai.dev [1] https://gpt3demo.com/category/code-generation https://gpt3demo.com/category/code-generation [2] https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/gpt3 https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/gpt3
- bhaak 5y agoIf I write a poem by variable names, don’t you think that would fall under copyright? The hurdle for getting copyright are pretty low (of course that also means any compensation by a court would be low). Anything that is not technical ly required (or deviates from some generic standard) but involves some aesthetic considerations is a already potentially copyrightable. Because the boundaries are so fuzzy no sane company lawyer would allow the use of CoPilot . Why take a risk for some glorified text snippets?
- qayxc 5y agoCopyright is different from licensing and is far more complicated that most people think. > Why take a risk for some glorified text snippets? Name an example where that was actually an issue. And I'm talking explicitly about single functions and even single lines of code.
- bhaak 5y agoThat's not how lawyers think. Microsoft's programmers were (are?) not allowed to read GPL code to rule out any doubt that they might be copy GPL code into the codebase, even if only unconsciously. Lawyers are not just for suing they are also for covering your ass so there is no way you could lose if you are getting sued.