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The example given is "sparse matrix transpose in the style of Tim Davis", but someone who wanted something with such specificity would be able to just take it
by Uhhrrr 4y ago
The example given is "sparse matrix transpose in the style of Tim Davis", but someone who wanted something with such specificity would be able to just take it from Github anyway, perhaps with a little more searching.
- lilyball 4y agoAnd would therefore have to follow the license of the code they took it from. That's exactly the point. Copilot is reproducing the same code but without the license.
- edsouza 4y agoPlease look up the license in the source code that Tim Davis points too, it just mentions it's LGPL, but doesn't include the full license text. And none of the C code mentions a license or Tim Davis. And if you dig further, the whole repo is mixed with BSD and LGPL "licensed" packages together. It's probably best that CoPilot does not suggest from code that does not have an explicit license stated. I think originally Tim Davis was complaining about the non public sources for suggestions which Github CoPilot ignored.
- deworms 4y agoA simple search on github reveals that those functions were reposted verbatim thousands of times, most people just copy and paste snippets of code they find useful, ignoring licenses. This highlights how all the power a license promises to hold is completely fictional. Any "in the style of Tim Davis" modifier only shows some kind of unwarranted self-importance complex on the part of the guy, thinking his style is widely known and distinctive (it's not). It's not the job of Copilot, the team that builds it, or the programmers that use it, to determine where the functions that were reposted thousands of times under all kinds of licenses originated. This is the same case as with copyrighted photos in newspapers, a paper prints a photo somebody allowed them to use, but then it turns out that person did not have the right to use it in the first place. Did not stop newspapers from printing photos at all. Here are the search terms: https://github.com/search?q=cs_transpose&type=Code https://github.com/search?q=cs_transpose&type=Code
- sfpotter 4y agoIt does not show an unwarranted sense of self-importance on the part of Tim Davis. Whether or not his style his widely known, his code is VERY widely used. Just look up SuiteSparse and try to find all of the downstream uses of it. It is one of the most---if not the most---ubiquitously used set of sparse linear algebra libraries. If you do anything with numerical linear algebra, there's a good chance you at least know what SuiteSparse is, and possibly also know who Tim Davis is. The bigger issue here is the effect this has on research. Tim Davis not only programmed this library, he did the basic research leading to many of the algorithms in SuiteSparse. He went ahead and released SuiteSparse open source, probably thinking that it would be a good deal for him, provided that its use was properly attributed. Provide a public service in exchange for attribution. This is a reasonable way to get support as an academic. Clearly he has had a large number of industrial collaborations which likely have provided him with a significant amount of funding over the years. Speaking for myself, if Microsoft has no compunction against behaving this way, I can no longer see the point in publicly releasing research code that I develop using an open source model. Microsoft is clearly telegraphing that they don't give a f** about licensing, although whether that holds if they are litigated against remains to be seen. I think there's an excellent chance many other researchers feel the same way. If you think openness and reproducibility in science is important, this is a problem.