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> I cannot speak for the rest of the community that have been hurt by this project, but for my part, I would be okay with not pursuing the answers to any of the

> I cannot speak for the rest of the community that have been hurt by this project, but for my part, I would be okay with not pursuing the answers to any of these questions with you in court if you agreed to resolve these problems now. I mean... has anyone really been "hurt" by Copilot? Copying from another thread... The concept of intellectual property exists to incentivize creating valuable art/literature/code. In theory at least, we agree to uphold IP laws because we recognize that more value gets created when they're a state enforced monopoly on the person who came up with that piece of art/literature/code. But we also recognize that sometimes these laws go too far; eg that there are patent trolls and corporations fighting public domain and game publishers going after anyone who makes a let's-play of their video. In those case, it's reasonable to think the world would be better off if we all shrugged and told the IP holders "too bad, someone else is going to create value off your work and you're not going to get a cent from it, we just think it's not worth building and maintaining a nightmare bureaucracy just so you can tax them". And from that point of view... Copilot is fine? It's not like the people posting code on Github or StackOverflow were thinking "I'm only doing this because I know a future AI 10 years from now won't scrap the code I wrote to train a neural network to create a code completion engine". Yeah, yeah, this breaks the spirit of the GPL and Stallman's vision, etc, etc. But... I mean, at some point, you got to stop debating semantics and wonder what we're coding for. What Microsoft has created is a tool that can collectively save developers billions of man-hours. It's a net good for humanity. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that this net good was developed is infinitely more important than the fact that Microsoft didn't pay royalties to a nebulous amount of developers who wouldn't have noticed anything if Microsoft hadn't developed Copilot. tldr MIT license is great, piracy is great, fanfiction is great, screw the very concept of intellectual property.

ddevault 4y ago
I actually agree, but this is a pretty deep philosophical issue that requires several more blog posts to fully unpack - blog posts I will write. Essentially, I agree that the very idea of intellectual property is invalid, and my end-game would be to have it overturned entirely, copyright and patents alike banished from this earth. However, a practical view must acknowledge that we live in a world where IP is normalized in the view of the public and in the view of the law. I would ordinarily "walk the walk" here and act as if the world operated according to my moral lens, i.e. not bugging people about compliance with software licenses. In this case, though, that would be counter-productive. The issue is that there is an asymmetry between the software producer and consumer. I believe that the user has a right to the source code for all software they use (praxis: reverse engineering is good even when it's illegal). However, under the current copyright regime, the producer can withhold their source code. If I publish open source software without concern for copyright (e.g. WTFPL), this allows commercial entities to take my code, but does not allow me to take theirs, so there is a power imbalance that works against my interests. So, free software licenses are necessary and important. In an ideal world, without copyright, I would be totally fine with GitHub Copilot - because I would also have access to its source code, and the model, and would be able to modify, repurpose, or sell it myself. But we don't live in that world, unfortunately, which allows GitHub to exploit the power imbalance by ingesting free software into a commercial product that they have the sole right to monetize and dictate terms of use for. It's this exact imbalance that the GPL family of licenses were written to address, and it's a spit in their face to pretend that they don't apply, especially from an organization that damn well ought to know better.
b3morales 4y ago
You're arguing for one-sided disarmament before the battle has been won. It may be true that there are other, better alternatives to copyright/IP. And open source licenses do amount to turning "strict IP" against itself, in a way. But they do so in a way that still follows the rules of copyright. Copilot is now trying to turn open source licensing against itself, without following those rules: to have its cake and eat it too.

ddevault 4y ago

I actually agree, but this is a pretty deep philosophical issue that requires several more blog posts to fully unpack - blog posts I will write. Essentially, I agree that the very idea of intellectual property is invalid, and my end-game would be to have it overturned entirely, copyright and patents alike banished from this earth. However, a practical view must acknowledge that we live in a world where IP is normalized in the view of the public and in the view of the law. I would ordinarily "walk the walk" here and act as if the world operated according to my moral lens, i.e. not bugging people about compliance with software licenses. In this case, though, that would be counter-productive. The issue is that there is an asymmetry between the software producer and consumer. I believe that the user has a right to the source code for all software they use (praxis: reverse engineering is good even when it's illegal). However, under the current copyright regime, the producer can withhold their source code. If I publish open source software without concern for copyright (e.g. WTFPL), this allows commercial entities to take my code, but does not allow me to take theirs, so there is a power imbalance that works against my interests. So, free software licenses are necessary and important. In an ideal world, without copyright, I would be totally fine with GitHub Copilot - because I would also have access to its source code, and the model, and would be able to modify, repurpose, or sell it myself. But we don't live in that world, unfortunately, which allows GitHub to exploit the power imbalance by ingesting free software into a commercial product that they have the sole right to monetize and dictate terms of use for. It's this exact imbalance that the GPL family of licenses were written to address, and it's a spit in their face to pretend that they don't apply, especially from an organization that damn well ought to know better.

b3morales 4y ago

You're arguing for one-sided disarmament before the battle has been won. It may be true that there are other, better alternatives to copyright/IP. And open source licenses do amount to turning "strict IP" against itself, in a way. But they do so in a way that still follows the rules of copyright. Copilot is now trying to turn open source licensing against itself, without following those rules: to have its cake and eat it too.