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>This is really different though in that this code is all open source. Open source or proprietary you still have to respect the license. >The argument is that

>This is really different though in that this code is all open source. Open source or proprietary you still have to respect the license. >The argument is that sufficient code is being verbatim copies so as to be a derivative work. Yeah, it also depends what derivative work means, I could make a script that inputs MS code and outputs it with obfuscation, is it derivative work or will MS complain that is not enough and I did not had permission to do this, AFAIK code on GitHub does not have the permssions to be used as input for copilot, and not all code there has the permissions from all authors to be hosted there. What MS should do is 1 use their proprietary repos as input too to show us that they think the results are derivative code 2 use their customer private code too to prove again that they are ready to prove in court that this is derivative work 3 open the model with no restrictions, then we could say MS is doing it for the advancement of society and sure charge for the service 4 promise to defend any developer in case their AI outputs copyrighted content.

ghaff 4y ago
>Open source or proprietary you still have to respect the license. >they might claim that I did not learned from their code but memorize secret algorithms The difference is that you can't claim open source code is a trade secret that contains algorithms that you can't reimplement in your own code.
- simion314 4y ago
  >The difference is that you can't claim open source code is a trade secret that contains algorithms that you can't reimplement in your own code. You can't use "trade secret" but MS Windows code is also no longer secret, they shared the code with third parties and was also leaked, so they can claim you do not respect the license or TOS,NDAs etc. Not sure if "secret" has anything to do with this, proprietary stuff is not secret, it could be source availleble or be a scripting language stuff or something trivial to find the original implementation like C# and Java
- tuckerman 4y ago
  It’s possible for there to be patent encumbered algorithms in open source code though. A license like Apache will contain a free license to use them to use/distribute the open source work… which I’m not sure would transfer if copilot happens to plop some unlicensed, unattributed violating code in your code base.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    At least some lawyers [1] will argue that code under an open source license like MIT has an implicit patent grant even absent specific verbiage. [1] https://opensource.com/article/18/3/patent-grant-mit-license https://opensource.com/article/18/3/patent-grant-mit-license
    - tuckerman 4y ago
      It would be interesting to see if this sort of implicit grant, or even the explicit ones, extend to using the patent outside the context of the original work. My main concern here is that copilot itself might not be illegal but that it is causing otherwise well-meaning developers to put themselves at legal risk.

ghaff 4y ago

>Open source or proprietary you still have to respect the license. >they might claim that I did not learned from their code but memorize secret algorithms The difference is that you can't claim open source code is a trade secret that contains algorithms that you can't reimplement in your own code.

simion314 4y ago
>The difference is that you can't claim open source code is a trade secret that contains algorithms that you can't reimplement in your own code. You can't use "trade secret" but MS Windows code is also no longer secret, they shared the code with third parties and was also leaked, so they can claim you do not respect the license or TOS,NDAs etc. Not sure if "secret" has anything to do with this, proprietary stuff is not secret, it could be source availleble or be a scripting language stuff or something trivial to find the original implementation like C# and Java
tuckerman 4y ago
It’s possible for there to be patent encumbered algorithms in open source code though. A license like Apache will contain a free license to use them to use/distribute the open source work… which I’m not sure would transfer if copilot happens to plop some unlicensed, unattributed violating code in your code base.
- ghaff 4y ago
  At least some lawyers [1] will argue that code under an open source license like MIT has an implicit patent grant even absent specific verbiage. [1] https://opensource.com/article/18/3/patent-grant-mit-license https://opensource.com/article/18/3/patent-grant-mit-license
  - tuckerman 4y ago
    It would be interesting to see if this sort of implicit grant, or even the explicit ones, extend to using the patent outside the context of the original work. My main concern here is that copilot itself might not be illegal but that it is causing otherwise well-meaning developers to put themselves at legal risk.