3 ms·

There's also one more question: 5. Even if it is illegal, is it actually bad? No one can possibly sell code snippets, the transaction costs are many orders of

There's also one more question: 5. Even if it is illegal, is it actually bad? No one can possibly sell code snippets, the transaction costs are many orders of magnitude greater than any reasonable price. In my opinion, at least in this case the benefits massively outweigh the costs and the law should not apply here.

citizenkeen 4y ago
Then the law should change. Saying "it's illegal but it's good/harmless" is a terrible stance.
- anamexis 4y ago
  Seems like an eminently reasonable stance, and exactly the stance you would take to get the law changed.
  - citizenkeen 4y ago
    Fair. I had read "and the law should not apply" as "so we ignore it", not "so we change it".
xtracto 4y ago
I really, REALLY like the idea of Copilot. I think it is a glance at what the future of AI can bring to improve programming. I understand where all the litigation and "uneasiness" is coming from, both from commercial and open-source projects. I've not installed or used it for the same reason (don't want to use AGPL or GPLd code by accident, and don't want my closed source code to be used accidentally as well), but the thought of Copilot being "killed" due to litigation/copyright/licensing issues is sad. For me, It's kind of like when MP3 first appeared: Sharing music in Napster or downloading Mp3s from Geocities was just amazing. The idea of having such things at your fingertips. Even though I understood the issue the authors had with the unpaid distribution of their music... still, the idea of "what could be..." made it amazing. I guess Microsoft could be a bit forward thinking, and implement the "Spotify" model in code: Pay OpenSource developers (whoever owns the repo, or whoever made a commit?) a small amount whenever their code gets used through Copilot. I'm super excited by how "Copilot" related services will look like in 10 years. And I really really hope that the technology/idea doesn't get killed by litigation.
- frazbin 4y ago
  Huh... These comments have given me an idea: MS needs to be forced to train a model to compensate (pay) code authors and codebases based on snippet suggestions given by their tool: the Spotify model replacing Napster!
  - sirsinsalot 4y ago
    See: Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier
  - Graffur 4y ago
    The comment you replied to gave you that idea nearly word for word..
    - frazbin 4y ago
      huh you're right! sorry I haven't been sleeping well lately :)
- PaulKeeble 4y ago
  Microsoft could have trained this on their own code and there would be no issue. The problem is instead of doing that they knew full well the approach would reproduce the code and they decided they would rather breach GPL than expose their own code. But I bet Microsoft has more than enough lines to train an AI, there was a clear choice to breach other peoples licenses in preference.
midasuni 4y ago
Some people won’t let you use their copyrighted work no matter how much you pay, that’s reasonable. By all means allow repos to opt in, although if it’s licensed under something like GPL there’s no way to convert it to non gpl without permission from every contributor. I for one am not interested in Microsoft or anyone else paying me to close my code. Allowing people to pay $xxx to copy my copyrighted work without my agreement is simple piracy. Either they international agreement to drop copyright as a concept, or obey the law.
- concordDance 4y ago
  > Some people won’t let you use their copyrighted work no matter how much you pay, that’s reasonable. Is it really? From a consequentialist utilitarian perspective?
  - midasuni 4y ago
    Yes, otherwise you’re saying rich people can break the law with no consequences. The alternative would be to completely remove copyright, which would be ok.
kraf 4y ago
Of course it's bad. Noone who put up their work as open source wants some huge company taking it and selling it to get even more competitive advantage and influence in the world. And that's without mentioning the people who put that into their license pretty much explicitly. Taking GPL code and getting away with it is a failure of our justice system, and that can't be made right with throwing pennies at developers.
- concordDance 4y ago
  In this case it seems obvious to me that the huge time savings for thousands of developers outweigh the fact that the original writers are offended. A world with copiloted snippets seems like a better one to live in than a world without.

citizenkeen 4y ago

Then the law should change. Saying "it's illegal but it's good/harmless" is a terrible stance.

anamexis 4y ago
Seems like an eminently reasonable stance, and exactly the stance you would take to get the law changed.
- citizenkeen 4y ago
  Fair. I had read "and the law should not apply" as "so we ignore it", not "so we change it".

xtracto 4y ago

I really, REALLY like the idea of Copilot. I think it is a glance at what the future of AI can bring to improve programming. I understand where all the litigation and "uneasiness" is coming from, both from commercial and open-source projects. I've not installed or used it for the same reason (don't want to use AGPL or GPLd code by accident, and don't want my closed source code to be used accidentally as well), but the thought of Copilot being "killed" due to litigation/copyright/licensing issues is sad. For me, It's kind of like when MP3 first appeared: Sharing music in Napster or downloading Mp3s from Geocities was just amazing. The idea of having such things at your fingertips. Even though I understood the issue the authors had with the unpaid distribution of their music... still, the idea of "what could be..." made it amazing. I guess Microsoft could be a bit forward thinking, and implement the "Spotify" model in code: Pay OpenSource developers (whoever owns the repo, or whoever made a commit?) a small amount whenever their code gets used through Copilot. I'm super excited by how "Copilot" related services will look like in 10 years. And I really really hope that the technology/idea doesn't get killed by litigation.

frazbin 4y ago
Huh... These comments have given me an idea: MS needs to be forced to train a model to compensate (pay) code authors and codebases based on snippet suggestions given by their tool: the Spotify model replacing Napster!
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  See: Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier
- Graffur 4y ago
  The comment you replied to gave you that idea nearly word for word..
  - frazbin 4y ago
    huh you're right! sorry I haven't been sleeping well lately :)
PaulKeeble 4y ago
Microsoft could have trained this on their own code and there would be no issue. The problem is instead of doing that they knew full well the approach would reproduce the code and they decided they would rather breach GPL than expose their own code. But I bet Microsoft has more than enough lines to train an AI, there was a clear choice to breach other peoples licenses in preference.

midasuni 4y ago

Some people won’t let you use their copyrighted work no matter how much you pay, that’s reasonable. By all means allow repos to opt in, although if it’s licensed under something like GPL there’s no way to convert it to non gpl without permission from every contributor. I for one am not interested in Microsoft or anyone else paying me to close my code. Allowing people to pay $xxx to copy my copyrighted work without my agreement is simple piracy. Either they international agreement to drop copyright as a concept, or obey the law.

concordDance 4y ago
> Some people won’t let you use their copyrighted work no matter how much you pay, that’s reasonable. Is it really? From a consequentialist utilitarian perspective?
- midasuni 4y ago
  Yes, otherwise you’re saying rich people can break the law with no consequences. The alternative would be to completely remove copyright, which would be ok.

kraf 4y ago

Of course it's bad. Noone who put up their work as open source wants some huge company taking it and selling it to get even more competitive advantage and influence in the world. And that's without mentioning the people who put that into their license pretty much explicitly. Taking GPL code and getting away with it is a failure of our justice system, and that can't be made right with throwing pennies at developers.

concordDance 4y ago
In this case it seems obvious to me that the huge time savings for thousands of developers outweigh the fact that the original writers are offended. A world with copiloted snippets seems like a better one to live in than a world without.