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Microsoft GitHub Copilot regardless of legality to me is a direct attack on OSS in an EEE manner. It is an abuse of the platform. It should have been opt-in. I
by yepthatsreality 5y ago
Microsoft GitHub Copilot regardless of legality to me is a direct attack on OSS in an EEE manner. It is an abuse of the platform. It should have been opt-in. It pushed me ahead to remove my repos from GitHub over to Gitlab (love that instant import feature), repos will be private by default. I will be deleting my Microsoft accounts too. Already off Windows.
I also think the software development community should consider poisoning the well, even if it’s already legally poisoned.
- maxerickson 5y agoMoving to Gitlab wouldn't stop them pulling code into the model would it? I get that it still makes a statement.
- dreamcompiler 5y agoIt would if the repo is private. But that defeats the purpose of OSS.
- yepthatsreality 5y agoVoting with your wallet for extra points.
- pjc50 5y agoSomeone should definitely sue them over this, to determine if the model is a "derived work" within the meaning of the GPL. Someone should also release a model trained on the leaked Windows source code ..
- 542458 5y agoPeople have sued over similar stuff in the past, like Google training their language model on copyrighted materials. The legal consensus is that a model trained on a large volume of copyrighted works does not infringe copyright, even if it occasionally vomits up chunks of the input model. That said, if you trained a model specifically designed to violate copyright I suspect the courts would have a different opinion. They consider intent just as much as (if not more than) what you actually did.
- ma2rten 5y agoDo you have a reference? Does this cover generative models?
- ghaff 5y agoHere is a discussion of the Author's Guild v. Google case: https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-court-decision-for-data-science-and-machine-learning-44cfc1c1bcaf https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-co...
- ma2rten 5y agoThe article says it is unclear if it covers generative models.
- 542458 5y agoThis is as good a starting place as any. https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright-for-literate-robots/ https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... This might sound stupid, and maybe it is, but that’s the state of law right now. It’s possible somebody will drag out a big slam dunk case that overturns much of this or that new laws will be passed… but right now (as far as I can tell) Copilot looks pretty legal. (Of course, talk to your legal counsel, this may vary be region, etc.)
- lallysingh 5y agoIt's a bit different here. It's just supposed to regurgitate parts of it's input model.
- 542458 5y agoAssuming GitHub isn’t lying, no it isn’t. They claim the vast majority of output is original, much like how GPT3 typically generates original text (although can sometimes output inputs verbatim). If that’s their intent and they haven’t deliberately tried to make their model output it’s inputs verbatim, then they’re good. Remember, there’s a big sampling bias online towards people sharing bits of code that are obvious verbatim inputs - you don’t see all the ones that aren’t.
- Kiro 5y agoI personally don't understand the anger. I don't care if a human or an AI use my code. I open sourced it to be used by anyone, big corps included.
- marcodiego 5y agoWhat you say only makes sense if your code is licensed under something similar to public domain. Some licenses, like the GPL, require derivative works to use the same license.
- speedgoose 5y agoIs it derivative work though? I don't think reading GPL code requires me to only write code under the GPL license.
- pittmajp 5y agoCould the derived work be created without the source?
- roblabla 5y agoNo, simply reading GPL code doesn't poison you (though it does put you in an awkward position), but copy pasting gpl code straight into your codebase is a copyright violation unless you can prove fair use. And copy pasting GPL code is what Microsoft Copilot has been repeatedly shown to do.
- ghaff 5y agoFirst of all, none of this matters if the resulting code isn't distributed in some manner. For an internal app, for example, none of this matters. Secondly, it's pretty much obvious that fairly trivial (and, frankly, probably not so trivial) code snippets are reused/reworked from various sources all the time. This makes it hard for me to see Copilot as this new and existentially harmful thing.
- 5y ago
- marcodiego 5y agoIt is only an attack on OSS if licenses like the GPL are not respected. If copilot simply copies code it was trained on, it is more of a threat to proprietary software, since any sufficiently large copy from GPL'd software would have to be GPL licensed too. If GPL is respected, copilot may help many proprietary softwares to be open source re-licensed. That should be seen as a positive outcome from FLOSS supporters. But it is not easy to predict exactly what will happen and how people and companies will behave.
- canadianfella 5y agoSoftwares? Software is plural.
- craftinator 5y agoActually, they both are correct. "Softwares" has a different and older connotation to it, but both are acceptable in English.
- canadianfella 5y agoIt’s correct the same way “on accident” is correct.
- yepthatsreality 5y agoI’m actually wondering why you would release such a product as it seems like a path to software developers unionizing.
- philipov 5y agoIf their use of GPL'd code is fair use, then they are probably not required to respect any restrictions the licenses places on the use of that code.
- matz1 5y agoI welcome this attack, to me all code should be free of any restrictions, like WTFPL. Information want to be free.