4 ms·

You probably don't sell code snippets that you collected from various sources you can't remember without knowing whether you're even allowed to sell some of the

You probably don't sell code snippets that you collected from various sources you can't remember without knowing whether you're even allowed to sell some of them. That's what Copilot does with extra steps. I don't see why it should be different just because Microsoft mixed the code snippets in a blender to obscure what they're doing. It's code laundering.

giovannibonetti 4y ago
"code laundering" is genious!
disconcision 4y ago
just trying to make the comparison more precise: using copilot is like subcontracting to a company who you know has no institutional qualms about their employees liberally copy/pasting from a known corpus of github repos. you know these employees don't always literally copy/paste, but all they do every day is read the corpus, so their code is always going to be basically derivative. you can optionally ask that the company avoids matches to existing code, which you know means that before sending you the code, the boss will fuzzy search their code against the corpus, asking their employees to write it again if a match is found. so given that this is the way the company works, and that you know this is the way they work, your task is to decide what your ethical and legal liabilities are.
chii 4y ago
> You probably don't sell code snippets that you collected from various sources you can't remember without knowing whether you're even allowed to sell some of them. actually i'm sure you do, you just don't think of it this way. The education you received to learn to code would consists of such snippets and examples. Then you sell your skill as a programmer, which consists of you recalling past experience and knowledge, and transform that into the final piece of code. Copilot is merely doing something like that, but way less sophisticated than a human brain.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  This. Sure I synthesize, but everything I synthesize is made out of stuff that came from somewhere. If the "snippets" are small enough, they become no different than me consulting the man page for a function. I think this will require looking at some actual examples to try to judge, and figure out how to articulate the basis for the judgement. Hm. That begs the question what good is it if it deals in such small bits? I guess that means if the snippets are large enough to be of any value at all, then they are automatically big enough to be damning.

giovannibonetti 4y ago

"code laundering" is genious!

disconcision 4y ago

just trying to make the comparison more precise: using copilot is like subcontracting to a company who you know has no institutional qualms about their employees liberally copy/pasting from a known corpus of github repos. you know these employees don't always literally copy/paste, but all they do every day is read the corpus, so their code is always going to be basically derivative. you can optionally ask that the company avoids matches to existing code, which you know means that before sending you the code, the boss will fuzzy search their code against the corpus, asking their employees to write it again if a match is found. so given that this is the way the company works, and that you know this is the way they work, your task is to decide what your ethical and legal liabilities are.

chii 4y ago

> You probably don't sell code snippets that you collected from various sources you can't remember without knowing whether you're even allowed to sell some of them. actually i'm sure you do, you just don't think of it this way. The education you received to learn to code would consists of such snippets and examples. Then you sell your skill as a programmer, which consists of you recalling past experience and knowledge, and transform that into the final piece of code. Copilot is merely doing something like that, but way less sophisticated than a human brain.

Brian_K_White 4y ago
This. Sure I synthesize, but everything I synthesize is made out of stuff that came from somewhere. If the "snippets" are small enough, they become no different than me consulting the man page for a function. I think this will require looking at some actual examples to try to judge, and figure out how to articulate the basis for the judgement. Hm. That begs the question what good is it if it deals in such small bits? I guess that means if the snippets are large enough to be of any value at all, then they are automatically big enough to be damning.