4 ms·
I read a lot GPL licensed code, does it mean I stole it? Should I put everything I write under the GPL license?
by speedgoose 5y ago
I read a lot GPL licensed code, does it mean I stole it? Should I put everything I write under the GPL license?
- rectang 5y agoThe answer is straightforward. If the similarity is such that a court would judge that copyright infringement occurred, then that code would have belonged under the GPL. Convincing a court to make a judgement of infringement is not an easy threshold to cross. But Github Copilot, like many AIs, is less judicious than humans about not reproducing its inspirations verbatim: https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309
- xigoi 5y agoIf you're getting paid to memorize snippets of GPL-licensed code and rewrite them into a proprietary codebase, I'd consider that stealing.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoIf you copy-paste chunks of code, which copilot has been caught doing, then yes you absolutely are violating the licenses in question.
- speedgoose 5y agoDo we have another example than the famous quake fast square root function?
- spicybright 5y agoYeah, I'm not fully convinced it's as bad as a lot are making it out to be. What is even considered a copyrightable code snippet? If GPL code had a function like `int add_1(int x) { return x + 1; }` and you copy and pasted it, is that really stealing? What about if you wrote identical code without having looked at the GPL code? Or even if you've seen the GPL code but type it from memory? Or if you copy from someone that illegally copied the GPL code? It seems very non trivial with small functions like this, which is exactly the kind of code copilot outputs anyways. It's not like you're stealing large and unique parts of the code.
- xigoi 5y agoI could try to find one, but I don't want to pay Micro$oft just to prove a point.