3 ms·

I suppose you learned to code without reading any code?

• bayindirh 4y ago
  No, I didn't and don't read other people's code to understand how something works. I use books and official language/library documentation for that. On the other hand, this is irrelevant to the issue at hand. GitHub copilot is not a tool for education. It's tool for auto-completing code, which can be put to production, where licenses and other stuff come into play. The issue is not code sharing per se. It's more of a legal problem, and an important one at that. In the software copyright sense, even reading code you can't import to a project (let it be leaked, not compatibly licensed or for any reason), puts you at risk of legal troubles. This is why we have methodologies like "clean room development". In Copilot's case, you're possibly deriving a code from a source which contains many licenses, and some of them are not compatible with that you're doing. As a result, you're in direct breach of the license which is not compatible with your code. On a more higher level, you're also breaching the ethics code and morality by using a code or its derivation with an incompatible license to your code, and disregarding other peoples desires codified as a case-tested and valid license. As a result, if you think that using a derivative of a GPL licensed code in your closed source application is OK on every front, then the vice versa is true. I can disassemble and reverse every part of your code and re-implement it as GPL bug for bug and open it. Because if you can breach my license, and expect no consequences, I can breach your license without consequences, as well. It's a two way street.