5 ms·

FWIW, just as Amazon and SalesForce are already doing their version of CoPilot, there is nothing to prevent GitHub from training its models off open source that

FWIW, just as Amazon and SalesForce are already doing their version of CoPilot, there is nothing to prevent GitHub from training its models off open source that is hosted on sr.ht or GitLab or anywhere else. If it is open source then the source is going to be available to be used for the models.

bayindirh 4y ago
Showing a reaction is very important in my book. I’m also moving to Source Hut. Not hosting my code in servers of a company which is openly hostile to open source and Linux is a good move. Lastly, you can try to prevent scraping. It’s a cat and mouse game, but at least your servers can’t be directly accessed by the training code itself.
- e-clinton 4y ago
  Perhaps the licenses just need to be amended to explicitly say “you may not train AI models with this source code” and then get ready for a court battle. I think Microsoft gives back to open source almost as much as they take, so I’m fine with them.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
quadrifoliate 4y ago
> there is nothing to prevent GitHub from training its models off open source that is hosted on sr.ht or GitLab or anywhere else I disagree. I think that GitHub is training Copilot on only repos currently on GitHub, because they can easily do so due to the Terms of Service [1] which allow them to "parse [user content] into a search index or otherwise analyze [user content] on our servers". They can reasonably show that an ML model fits the definition of "otherwise analyze content", regardless of the license. If code that was never hosted on GitHub to begin with starts showing up verbatim in Copilot suggestions, it might be a more legally challenging position for them. It is unfortunate grey area if people decide to upload copies of free software repos to GitHub anyway, but perhaps future versions of the GPL or other free/libre licenses could be explicit about usage in training ML models. I have no idea what Amazon or Salesforce are doing, but it would be interesting to hear what they are using for training data and how they justify compliance with the software licenses. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#3-ownership-of-content-right-to-post-and-license-grants https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...
- yakak 4y ago
  That's an interesting take but there's not really any protection in current open source licenses to stop someone else from agreeing to GitHub or any other hosting's terms for their clone of your repo.
  - fartcannon 4y ago
    A lot of open source licenses require numerous things including attribution, at the very least. So when copilot barfs out someones code verbatim, or nearly verbatim, after having memorized that code and it doesn't say who it's referencing, suddenly there's a problem.
    - georgyo 4y ago
      IANAL, but still no. The user who uploaded the code did provide attribution. They could have uploaded that code as part of a vendoring. There is not some flag that says they are not the copyright holders. Copilot trains on that code just the same. More importantly, the fair use they are claiming seems to bypass attribution and licensing requirements. It need only access to the code. That is to say that it can 100% train on code hosted elsewhere. Until this fair use gets challenged by lawsuits, it will hold true. The fact that we have not heard of these lawsuits yet, at least to me, shows that lawyers agree it is legal.
      - fartcannon 4y ago
        Just saying what you want to be true, doesn't make it so. Attribution is required for all licenses that require it. Microsoft is laundering intellectual property.
        yakak 4y ago
        A license is describing how you want to reassign rights given to you by copyright. AFAICT Microsoft believes they are within fair use granted by copyright law itself. If they are correct they don't have to follow individual license terms, if they are incorrect it makes no difference if they scrape or receive code because any complex project is a mix of many past authors not all of whom must be on GitHub.
fartcannon 4y ago
The loss of attribution, for example, is going to become an issue. Especially since copilot barfs out code chunks verbatim at times. And either way, it's time to yet again to step around Microsoft's interference in the beautiful world of open source.
gsatic 4y ago
It's called signalling. The chimp troupe has a wide variety of chimps with different needs. How do you find the ones where needs align? You send out such signals.
minraws 4y ago
Wait Amazon? what are they training it on? code hosted on AWS? what kind of mess are we in...? Honestly all this is fine but train it on your own code, you have the money to do that, and the scale, why bother us the small fish. What's the worse that can happen, you will have to maybe pay people to write code, maybe start open source sponsor program to get rights to do such things, like based on need of project you might give them free hosting, free services, free etc... for project owners of smaller projects give them all some small grants. If every company did that for such models we will have much better OSS. Also still IMO there really doesn't seem to be much we can do against it in the OSS space atleast, all code is open-source is hence code that's all openly readable, if a model is assumed to be a system that doesn't do 1:1 copy, the grounds seem shaky for legal process. Though honestly I very much want to be wrong, can we like file a lawsuit against such AIs in general, I see a similar problem with DallE looking at copyrighted art... What's next copyrighted music? Can't believe I am saying this but I feel bad for people who have copyrights. Music labels, entertainment empires, big services companies(like Accenture) and such will probably somehow survive, but the smaller people will get crushed. And I say that as someone who primarily pursued Machine Learning in academics until graduation. Maybe getting some "justified" compensation would be achievable...!?

bayindirh 4y ago

Showing a reaction is very important in my book. I’m also moving to Source Hut. Not hosting my code in servers of a company which is openly hostile to open source and Linux is a good move. Lastly, you can try to prevent scraping. It’s a cat and mouse game, but at least your servers can’t be directly accessed by the training code itself.

e-clinton 4y ago
Perhaps the licenses just need to be amended to explicitly say “you may not train AI models with this source code” and then get ready for a court battle. I think Microsoft gives back to open source almost as much as they take, so I’m fine with them.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

quadrifoliate 4y ago

> there is nothing to prevent GitHub from training its models off open source that is hosted on sr.ht or GitLab or anywhere else I disagree. I think that GitHub is training Copilot on only repos currently on GitHub, because they can easily do so due to the Terms of Service [1] which allow them to "parse [user content] into a search index or otherwise analyze [user content] on our servers". They can reasonably show that an ML model fits the definition of "otherwise analyze content", regardless of the license. If code that was never hosted on GitHub to begin with starts showing up verbatim in Copilot suggestions, it might be a more legally challenging position for them. It is unfortunate grey area if people decide to upload copies of free software repos to GitHub anyway, but perhaps future versions of the GPL or other free/libre licenses could be explicit about usage in training ML models. I have no idea what Amazon or Salesforce are doing, but it would be interesting to hear what they are using for training data and how they justify compliance with the software licenses. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#3-ownership-of-content-right-to-post-and-license-grants https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

yakak 4y ago
That's an interesting take but there's not really any protection in current open source licenses to stop someone else from agreeing to GitHub or any other hosting's terms for their clone of your repo.
- fartcannon 4y ago
  A lot of open source licenses require numerous things including attribution, at the very least. So when copilot barfs out someones code verbatim, or nearly verbatim, after having memorized that code and it doesn't say who it's referencing, suddenly there's a problem.
  - georgyo 4y ago
    IANAL, but still no. The user who uploaded the code did provide attribution. They could have uploaded that code as part of a vendoring. There is not some flag that says they are not the copyright holders. Copilot trains on that code just the same. More importantly, the fair use they are claiming seems to bypass attribution and licensing requirements. It need only access to the code. That is to say that it can 100% train on code hosted elsewhere. Until this fair use gets challenged by lawsuits, it will hold true. The fact that we have not heard of these lawsuits yet, at least to me, shows that lawyers agree it is legal.
    - fartcannon 4y ago
      Just saying what you want to be true, doesn't make it so. Attribution is required for all licenses that require it. Microsoft is laundering intellectual property.
      - yakak 4y ago
        A license is describing how you want to reassign rights given to you by copyright. AFAICT Microsoft believes they are within fair use granted by copyright law itself. If they are correct they don't have to follow individual license terms, if they are incorrect it makes no difference if they scrape or receive code because any complex project is a mix of many past authors not all of whom must be on GitHub.

fartcannon 4y ago

The loss of attribution, for example, is going to become an issue. Especially since copilot barfs out code chunks verbatim at times. And either way, it's time to yet again to step around Microsoft's interference in the beautiful world of open source.

gsatic 4y ago

It's called signalling. The chimp troupe has a wide variety of chimps with different needs. How do you find the ones where needs align? You send out such signals.

minraws 4y ago

Wait Amazon? what are they training it on? code hosted on AWS? what kind of mess are we in...? Honestly all this is fine but train it on your own code, you have the money to do that, and the scale, why bother us the small fish. What's the worse that can happen, you will have to maybe pay people to write code, maybe start open source sponsor program to get rights to do such things, like based on need of project you might give them free hosting, free services, free etc... for project owners of smaller projects give them all some small grants. If every company did that for such models we will have much better OSS. Also still IMO there really doesn't seem to be much we can do against it in the OSS space atleast, all code is open-source is hence code that's all openly readable, if a model is assumed to be a system that doesn't do 1:1 copy, the grounds seem shaky for legal process. Though honestly I very much want to be wrong, can we like file a lawsuit against such AIs in general, I see a similar problem with DallE looking at copyrighted art... What's next copyrighted music? Can't believe I am saying this but I feel bad for people who have copyrights. Music labels, entertainment empires, big services companies(like Accenture) and such will probably somehow survive, but the smaller people will get crushed. And I say that as someone who primarily pursued Machine Learning in academics until graduation. Maybe getting some "justified" compensation would be achievable...!?