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> The larger issue is that anyone using GitHub is donating their work for re-use without attribution through Copilot. Wrong. Lets say a GPL project is not hos

> The larger issue is that anyone using GitHub is donating their work for re-use without attribution through Copilot. Wrong. Lets say a GPL project is not hosted on GitHub officially. I can easily setup a mirror for it though on GitHub as the GPL doesn't prevent me from doing it... Point is that anyone can put my work on GitHub, even if I don't want to.Assuming the project is under a free license though.

37ef_ced3 5y ago
Yes, you can "donate" someone else's code, knowing Microsoft will violate a use-with-attribution license. You can do it, but it's WRONG. Copilot is trained on public GitHub repositories of any license: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot#Technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot#Technology We must all stop using GitHub.
- edoceo 5y ago
  My team has code, MIT and GPL, on GitHub. We know the risk of this kind of theft. We remain on GitHub for the discoverability. It's not so absolute.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  I wonder what kind of language you would need to add to your license in order to explicitly forbid the ingestion of your code by Copilot and/or like projects.
  - ghoward 5y ago
    IANAL, but I have written licenses for that purpose. [1] (I'm trying to get them reviewed by a lawyer, but can't afford to; maybe I'll do a GoFundMe.) What I did is say that if you feed copyrighted software to an algorithm that itself outputs software, then the license applies to the output. This covers the output of compilers and such, but it would also cover Copilot in my opinion. We'll see what a lawyer says. However, even with a license, I wouldn't doubt that Microsoft would just put it through GitHub anyway because finding them out would be extraordinarily hard. [1]: https://yzena.com/licenses/ https://yzena.com/licenses/
    - xigoi 5y ago
      The “Yzena Copyleft License” states that it's a copyleft license, but it also states that it's not a viral license. According to Wikipedia, a viral license and a copyleft license are the same thing.
      - ghoward 5y ago
        Wikipedia is not the best source of information. There is a difference between "strong" copyleft and "weak" copyleft. An example of "weak" (non-viral) copyleft is the CDDL. In fact, the CDDL's Wikipedia page talks about strong and weak copyleft. You can read [1] for a breakdown of copyleft by an actual lawyer. Suffice it to say that Wikipedia's Copyleft page is woefully inadequate. [1]: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/10/24/How-to-Speak-Copyleft.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/10/24/How-to-Speak-Copyl...
        xigoi 5y ago
        If the Wikipedia article is misleading, it probably shouldn't be linked in the license…
        ghoward 5y ago
        I link to Wikipedia as a first point of call. People should always look deeper, and I can't help that.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I wonder what kind of language you would need to add to your license in order to explicitly forbid the ingestion of your code by Copilot and/or like projects. If Microsoft's theory is correct, under US law it is impossible to forbid this with a license, because a license is just an offer of additional permissions beyond what is available automatically under law, and Microsoft's theory is that ingesting code into GitHub is fair use and therefore permitted under law as an exception to copyright without any license from the copyright owner. If Microsoft's theory is not correct, pretty much any license with an attribution requirement (among others, for other reasons) would work. The idea that a special license is needed or of any use doesn't seem to have any justification, even in theory. (As is the idea that hosting publicly but not on GitHub changes the legal parameters.)
    - ghoward 5y ago
      You are correct. I just want to say that I believe the fair use argument only applies for training, but not for distribution. I make the case for that in [1]. [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/uploads/copilot.pdf https://gavinhoward.com/uploads/copilot.pdf
    - Zababa 5y ago
      There's a part that I don't understand. If some software is mirrored on github by someone that isn't the copyright owner, it seems like github shouldn't be able to use it. Yet they said nothing about that specifically. In that case, is the only option to put code somewhere else than github under a license that forbids reuploading to github, and issue DMCAs when/if people reupload your code? It also sounds like when code is removed through DMCA, it should be removed from the training set and they should retrain copilot.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > If some software is mirrored on github by someone that isn't the copyright owner, it seems like github shouldn't be able to use it. If they don't need permission from the copyright owner, either via license of GitHub T&C, because it's fair use, which is their overt legal theory, then why would it matter legally whether the code was posted to GitHub at all, much less by whom? Ingesting only code form GitHub is a practical convenience that has nothing to do with their legal theory of the right to do it. > Yet they said nothing about that specifically Their theory of fair use means they have the right to ingest any code, irrespective of who owns it and what conditions (if any) it is licensed under or where (or even if) it is hosted online. They don't need a separate justification for your scenario if the theory they’ve cited is correct. > In that case, is the only option to put code somewhere else than github under a license that forbids reuploading to github, and issue DMCAs when/if people reupload your code Nope, that doesn't help at all, legally; it may help practically as long as they are just using GitHub hosted code and not consuming code from other public hosting platforms, but it has no bearing on their legal theory of why they can ingest code without additional permissions.
leephillips 5y ago
How does that make what 37ef_ced3 said wrong? I’m not following your logic.
- emilengler 5y ago
  > The writing is on the wall. You MUST host your own code on a stand-alone website. Because this does not prevent having the code to land on GitHub at the of the day assuming it is published under a free license. Now it depends on how you interpret the "MUST". My logic only makes sense if you consider it to a dogmatic-like prevention.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    The statement you tagged as “wrong” was: > The larger issue is that anyone using GitHub is donating their work for re-use without attribution through Copilot. Why is this wrong?
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      It is wrong as a specific statement about GitHub, because regardless of current practice, the legal theory for Copilot applies to any code anywhere, so anything that is publicly accessible would involve the same risk. It's not dependent on use of GitHub even if Microsoft has initially started their because it's easier for them.
      - leephillips 5y ago
        So this sense of “wrong” is similar to “correct”. Also, I don’t see how this is true. Code on my website is publicly accessible, but not in the public domain, nor licensed for re-use, unless I say that it is.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        Licensing matters for things that would be forbidden without permission by copyright law. Fair use is an exception to copyright law. Microsoft's explicit legal theory around Copilot is that ingesting code for it (and ingesting content to train ML models more generally) is fair use. If there theory is correct, license is irrelevant, there is no legal (at least copyright-based) barrier to them using any source code they can get their hands on to train Copilot.

37ef_ced3 5y ago

Yes, you can "donate" someone else's code, knowing Microsoft will violate a use-with-attribution license. You can do it, but it's WRONG. Copilot is trained on public GitHub repositories of any license: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot#Technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot#Technology We must all stop using GitHub.

edoceo 5y ago
My team has code, MIT and GPL, on GitHub. We know the risk of this kind of theft. We remain on GitHub for the discoverability. It's not so absolute.
_0ffh 5y ago
I wonder what kind of language you would need to add to your license in order to explicitly forbid the ingestion of your code by Copilot and/or like projects.
- ghoward 5y ago
  IANAL, but I have written licenses for that purpose. [1] (I'm trying to get them reviewed by a lawyer, but can't afford to; maybe I'll do a GoFundMe.) What I did is say that if you feed copyrighted software to an algorithm that itself outputs software, then the license applies to the output. This covers the output of compilers and such, but it would also cover Copilot in my opinion. We'll see what a lawyer says. However, even with a license, I wouldn't doubt that Microsoft would just put it through GitHub anyway because finding them out would be extraordinarily hard. [1]: https://yzena.com/licenses/ https://yzena.com/licenses/
  - xigoi 5y ago
    The “Yzena Copyleft License” states that it's a copyleft license, but it also states that it's not a viral license. According to Wikipedia, a viral license and a copyleft license are the same thing.
    - ghoward 5y ago
      Wikipedia is not the best source of information. There is a difference between "strong" copyleft and "weak" copyleft. An example of "weak" (non-viral) copyleft is the CDDL. In fact, the CDDL's Wikipedia page talks about strong and weak copyleft. You can read [1] for a breakdown of copyleft by an actual lawyer. Suffice it to say that Wikipedia's Copyleft page is woefully inadequate. [1]: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/10/24/How-to-Speak-Copyleft.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/10/24/How-to-Speak-Copyl...
      - xigoi 5y ago
        If the Wikipedia article is misleading, it probably shouldn't be linked in the license…
        ghoward 5y ago
        I link to Wikipedia as a first point of call. People should always look deeper, and I can't help that.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I wonder what kind of language you would need to add to your license in order to explicitly forbid the ingestion of your code by Copilot and/or like projects. If Microsoft's theory is correct, under US law it is impossible to forbid this with a license, because a license is just an offer of additional permissions beyond what is available automatically under law, and Microsoft's theory is that ingesting code into GitHub is fair use and therefore permitted under law as an exception to copyright without any license from the copyright owner. If Microsoft's theory is not correct, pretty much any license with an attribution requirement (among others, for other reasons) would work. The idea that a special license is needed or of any use doesn't seem to have any justification, even in theory. (As is the idea that hosting publicly but not on GitHub changes the legal parameters.)
  - ghoward 5y ago
    You are correct. I just want to say that I believe the fair use argument only applies for training, but not for distribution. I make the case for that in [1]. [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/uploads/copilot.pdf https://gavinhoward.com/uploads/copilot.pdf
  - Zababa 5y ago
    There's a part that I don't understand. If some software is mirrored on github by someone that isn't the copyright owner, it seems like github shouldn't be able to use it. Yet they said nothing about that specifically. In that case, is the only option to put code somewhere else than github under a license that forbids reuploading to github, and issue DMCAs when/if people reupload your code? It also sounds like when code is removed through DMCA, it should be removed from the training set and they should retrain copilot.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > If some software is mirrored on github by someone that isn't the copyright owner, it seems like github shouldn't be able to use it. If they don't need permission from the copyright owner, either via license of GitHub T&C, because it's fair use, which is their overt legal theory, then why would it matter legally whether the code was posted to GitHub at all, much less by whom? Ingesting only code form GitHub is a practical convenience that has nothing to do with their legal theory of the right to do it. > Yet they said nothing about that specifically Their theory of fair use means they have the right to ingest any code, irrespective of who owns it and what conditions (if any) it is licensed under or where (or even if) it is hosted online. They don't need a separate justification for your scenario if the theory they’ve cited is correct. > In that case, is the only option to put code somewhere else than github under a license that forbids reuploading to github, and issue DMCAs when/if people reupload your code Nope, that doesn't help at all, legally; it may help practically as long as they are just using GitHub hosted code and not consuming code from other public hosting platforms, but it has no bearing on their legal theory of why they can ingest code without additional permissions.

leephillips 5y ago

How does that make what 37ef_ced3 said wrong? I’m not following your logic.

emilengler 5y ago
> The writing is on the wall. You MUST host your own code on a stand-alone website. Because this does not prevent having the code to land on GitHub at the of the day assuming it is published under a free license. Now it depends on how you interpret the "MUST". My logic only makes sense if you consider it to a dogmatic-like prevention.
- leephillips 5y ago
  The statement you tagged as “wrong” was: > The larger issue is that anyone using GitHub is donating their work for re-use without attribution through Copilot. Why is this wrong?
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    It is wrong as a specific statement about GitHub, because regardless of current practice, the legal theory for Copilot applies to any code anywhere, so anything that is publicly accessible would involve the same risk. It's not dependent on use of GitHub even if Microsoft has initially started their because it's easier for them.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      So this sense of “wrong” is similar to “correct”. Also, I don’t see how this is true. Code on my website is publicly accessible, but not in the public domain, nor licensed for re-use, unless I say that it is.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        Licensing matters for things that would be forbidden without permission by copyright law. Fair use is an exception to copyright law. Microsoft's explicit legal theory around Copilot is that ingesting code for it (and ingesting content to train ML models more generally) is fair use. If there theory is correct, license is irrelevant, there is no legal (at least copyright-based) barrier to them using any source code they can get their hands on to train Copilot.