4 ms·

No one is complaining about copilot making programming easier or automating it. We're upset because it's quite literally infringing on intellectual property. I

No one is complaining about copilot making programming easier or automating it. We're upset because it's quite literally infringing on intellectual property. Infringing on intellectual property that's been set aside for the exclusive use of the commons.

pmarreck 4y ago
Do you use it? Have you ever used it? How many people making negative comments about it here have actually used it? I don't actually believe many have. I suggest at least trying it out before lighting your torches. If it infringes everyone equally and everyone equally benefits from the infringement, has a net wrong actually occurred? (which of course begs the "do the ends justify the means" question...) I don't see how this is any different a form of "infringement" than me copying and pasting snippets of other peoples' code, and then modifying it to suit my particular context, without specific attribution, except that the latter is a much more laborious and time-consuming process than copilot autocomplete, and programming is all about tedium elimination
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  > If it infringes everyone equally and everyone equally benefits from the infringement, has a net wrong actually occurred? It’s not done equally though. Copyleft code is extremely likely to be on GitHub somewhere, while internal proprietary code is often not. Copilot will thus have been trained more on the former than the latter. > I don't see how this is any different a form of "infringement" than me copying and pasting snippets of other peoples' code, and then modifying it to suit my particular context, without specific attribution It’s no different, but that is also copyright infringement.
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    > but that is also copyright infringement. so basically all of Stackoverflow is copyright infringement and has been for decades? Find me the programmer who has never either 1) copied and pasted directly from the internet, or 2) taken an idea found on the internet and massaged it for their own purposes. I mean... this is basically why programming is so lucrative IMHO. Everyone is piggybacking off of everyone else's work (at least in open source)
    - ryukafalz 4y ago
      (Recent) StackOverflow contributions are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 by default (though the author can of course release it under any additional licenses they choose): https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing If the code is really sufficiently trivial (and I’d guess that most code samples you’ll find on StackOverflow are) you may have a fair use argument in the US. Generally speaking though (and especially for anything nontrivial) you need to respect the license. CC BY-SA 4.0 is one-way compatible with GPLv3, though, so that helps if you’re including it in a GPLv3 codebase: https://creativecommons.org/2015/10/08/cc-by-sa-4-0-now-one-way-compatible-with-gplv3/ https://creativecommons.org/2015/10/08/cc-by-sa-4-0-now-one-...
      - pmarreck 4y ago
        Define "sufficiently trivial"
        ryukafalz 4y ago
        It's fuzzy and imprecise, as many legal concepts are. Small/unoriginal enough snippets may not even be copyrightable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality Then even if it is copyrightable, under some circumstances your use of it may be considered fair use anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors Or potentially de minimis: https://blogs.library.unt.edu/copyright/2017/09/05/the-de-minimis-defense-in-copyright-law-de-mini-what/ https://blogs.library.unt.edu/copyright/2017/09/05/the-de-mi... But when in doubt, ask for permission or ask a lawyer.
    - account42 4y ago
      Even apart from copyright aspect, it would be nice if we as programmers would improve our attitude towards attribution. If researchers can cite the work that has influenced theirs without legal threats than so can we.
    - zvr 4y ago
- belorn 4y ago
  Github explicitly leaves out proprietary code bases, included microsoft windows source code (Microsoft own github and uses it for their own products). If Microsoft included their own source code when training copilot then at least they would be intellectually honest, but they don't. They only consider GPL and other free and open source code to be up for grabs.
jazzyjackson 4y ago
god bless AI for moving human society beyond silly notions like ideas-as-property copyright was established to increase the innovation and creative will of the arts and sciences, what could increase that creative force more than an AI assistant who has seen every creative work ever made?
- account42 4y ago
  I'd be all for returning ALL code to the commons. Except that is not what is happening here. The problem is that AI is being used to take code, which was provided to the commons under the explicit condition that anything built with it is also released under the same terms, is now being fed to a magic mystery machine to produce code that can supposedly legally be witheld from the comments. The only code that this affects is the one that was already shared - you won't see Microsoft feeding Windows and Office source code into Copilot anytime soon.

pmarreck 4y ago

Do you use it? Have you ever used it? How many people making negative comments about it here have actually used it? I don't actually believe many have. I suggest at least trying it out before lighting your torches. If it infringes everyone equally and everyone equally benefits from the infringement, has a net wrong actually occurred? (which of course begs the "do the ends justify the means" question...) I don't see how this is any different a form of "infringement" than me copying and pasting snippets of other peoples' code, and then modifying it to suit my particular context, without specific attribution, except that the latter is a much more laborious and time-consuming process than copilot autocomplete, and programming is all about tedium elimination

ryukafalz 4y ago
> If it infringes everyone equally and everyone equally benefits from the infringement, has a net wrong actually occurred? It’s not done equally though. Copyleft code is extremely likely to be on GitHub somewhere, while internal proprietary code is often not. Copilot will thus have been trained more on the former than the latter. > I don't see how this is any different a form of "infringement" than me copying and pasting snippets of other peoples' code, and then modifying it to suit my particular context, without specific attribution It’s no different, but that is also copyright infringement.
- pmarreck 4y ago
  > but that is also copyright infringement. so basically all of Stackoverflow is copyright infringement and has been for decades? Find me the programmer who has never either 1) copied and pasted directly from the internet, or 2) taken an idea found on the internet and massaged it for their own purposes. I mean... this is basically why programming is so lucrative IMHO. Everyone is piggybacking off of everyone else's work (at least in open source)
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    (Recent) StackOverflow contributions are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 by default (though the author can of course release it under any additional licenses they choose): https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing If the code is really sufficiently trivial (and I’d guess that most code samples you’ll find on StackOverflow are) you may have a fair use argument in the US. Generally speaking though (and especially for anything nontrivial) you need to respect the license. CC BY-SA 4.0 is one-way compatible with GPLv3, though, so that helps if you’re including it in a GPLv3 codebase: https://creativecommons.org/2015/10/08/cc-by-sa-4-0-now-one-way-compatible-with-gplv3/ https://creativecommons.org/2015/10/08/cc-by-sa-4-0-now-one-...
    - pmarreck 4y ago
      Define "sufficiently trivial"
      - ryukafalz 4y ago
        It's fuzzy and imprecise, as many legal concepts are. Small/unoriginal enough snippets may not even be copyrightable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality Then even if it is copyrightable, under some circumstances your use of it may be considered fair use anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors Or potentially de minimis: https://blogs.library.unt.edu/copyright/2017/09/05/the-de-minimis-defense-in-copyright-law-de-mini-what/ https://blogs.library.unt.edu/copyright/2017/09/05/the-de-mi... But when in doubt, ask for permission or ask a lawyer.
  - account42 4y ago
    Even apart from copyright aspect, it would be nice if we as programmers would improve our attitude towards attribution. If researchers can cite the work that has influenced theirs without legal threats than so can we.
  - zvr 4y ago
belorn 4y ago
Github explicitly leaves out proprietary code bases, included microsoft windows source code (Microsoft own github and uses it for their own products). If Microsoft included their own source code when training copilot then at least they would be intellectually honest, but they don't. They only consider GPL and other free and open source code to be up for grabs.

jazzyjackson 4y ago

god bless AI for moving human society beyond silly notions like ideas-as-property copyright was established to increase the innovation and creative will of the arts and sciences, what could increase that creative force more than an AI assistant who has seen every creative work ever made?

account42 4y ago
I'd be all for returning ALL code to the commons. Except that is not what is happening here. The problem is that AI is being used to take code, which was provided to the commons under the explicit condition that anything built with it is also released under the same terms, is now being fed to a magic mystery machine to produce code that can supposedly legally be witheld from the comments. The only code that this affects is the one that was already shared - you won't see Microsoft feeding Windows and Office source code into Copilot anytime soon.