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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 sugges

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
    The tens of thousands of developers in a company I am familiar with have taken a basic training on intellectual property concepts and software licenses. A typical case mentioned in the training is that code from StackOverflow is (probably) licenses under CC-BY-SA 4.0 and as such it can never be copied inside their proprietary-licensed code base.
    - ryukafalz 4y ago
      This is something I wish more companies would do. It’s sorely needed.
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.

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
  The tens of thousands of developers in a company I am familiar with have taken a basic training on intellectual property concepts and software licenses. A typical case mentioned in the training is that code from StackOverflow is (probably) licenses under CC-BY-SA 4.0 and as such it can never be copied inside their proprietary-licensed code base.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    This is something I wish more companies would do. It’s sorely needed.

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.