6 ms·

Github does plenty of stuff that you can't do. e.g. the contributions graph as just one example that comes to mind. That's not unfair, and not the basis for a

by beachy 4y ago

Github does plenty of stuff that you can't do. e.g. the contributions graph as just one example that comes to mind. That's not unfair, and not the basis for a lawsuit, it's just business. > Copilot is not only making money off of open-source, they are making money off of open-source in a way others can't. Of course! That's why MS paid squillions to buy Github.

treis 4y ago
You're not supposed to be able to use dominance in one market (git hosting) to gain dominance in another (AI powered code suggestions).
- wfme 4y ago
  What do you mean "You're not supposed to"? Is there some law that forbids this? From my (potentially naive) POV this seems to be roughly equivalent to asking physics professors to stay away from mathematics since they are likely to have some relevant cross-domain expertise.
  - mkr-hn 4y ago
    Microsoft has been nailed for this exact kind of thing in the past. This isn't hypothetical.
    - naikrovek 4y ago
      it only runs afowl of antitrust laws if it solidifies an unfair monopoly and/or uses market position as a monopoly holder to prevent fair competition from emerging. most monopolies are completely legal. small town with only one gas station or one grocery store? 100% monopoly, 100% legal. there are plenty of alternatives to github, paid, free, as a service, and self-hosted. GitHub has a large market share, but no monopoly.
      - mkr-hn 4y ago
        This would, of course, need to be determined in court. Microsoft argued it had plenty of competition when the DOJ came for it over Windows and bundling. Like I said, this isn't unexplored territory for Microsoft. This is the company of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and the Halloween documents. This isn't a company with plenty of goodwill in its sails launching a hip new product. They're not Do No Evil era Google or Apple riding high on the iPod. We can't just pretend there isn't a history.
        naikrovek 4y ago
        you're making a big assumption here, that Microsoft did not learn from their mistakes. I posit that they have indeed learned from their mistakes. 1) They train Copilot with repos hosted on github.com. 2) Users who upload code to github.com grant GitHub an explicit license[0] granting GitHub the right to show that code to others. 3) GitHub do not specify which technologies or techniques they may use to show this code to others, meaning they may use any technique they like. Microsoft have learned. And they have covered their collective asses. Users who host code on github.com agreed to these terms. Users who don't like their code showing up in Copilot should not be hosting their code on GitHub, because they agreed to have their code delivered to others when they signed up. [0]: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#d-user-generated-content https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...
        vermilingua 4y ago
        From the linked terms of service: > This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service[...] I imagine the crux of this case will be what constitutes "the Service", and whether that includes Copilot. Also whether licensing Copilot counts as selling Your Content.
        naikrovek 4y ago
        GitHub provides the code free of charge, you pay for the GPU time to train the AI model, I would assume, since that is what costs GitHub money.
    - abigail95 4y ago
      Microsoft used its OS dominance to... solidify its OS dominance? Does the law really say you can't include a free web browser if someone else created a paid one? I don't want to live in a world where potential improvements for consumers get companies sued for antitrust.
      - mkr-hn 4y ago
        I highly recommend looking into the history if this really is new to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
  - notacoward 4y ago
    > Is there some law that forbids this? Yes. It's called the Sherman Act, and it's the basis of anti-trust enforcement in the US. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... <<<The Sherman Act outlaws "every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade," and any "monopolization, attempted monopolization, or conspiracy or combination to monopolize." >>> I know lots of people here don't like it, but it is the law and that was the question; "this" in parent clearly meant "use dominance in one market to gain dominance in another" in grandparent, regardless of whether that's actually the central issue here or not.
  - 3836293648 4y ago
    Yes, this is the basis of antitrust law
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  But who gets to draw the lines? Why can't both of these be in a single market "tools for programmers"?
- sushid 4y ago
  You might be confused but that's literally what you do as a business. You leverage your domain area expertise to expand into new areas of business. For instance, Apple already knew about the portable hardware market and extended their reach into the portable music market via iPod. It used the iPod to reach the music marketplace via iTunes. Used its market dominance to create iPhone and the rest is history. Maybe that's a personal maxim on your part but there's no law that says if you have dominance (what does that even mean?) in one market you cannot enter another. Think about what you're saying. We'd have no multi-product company if that were the case. What does "dominance" or "market" mean anyway?
  - jerojero 4y ago
    That's what you do when you are not at-risk of being a monopoly in a sector. Apple could do these things back then because they were still a relatively small company in the tech sector. But now a days things do start to get more complicated. As you point out, establishing what dominance is in a market is a tricky thing and it is why governments will investigate any potential signs of it. Now, personally I don't think this is really an issue for Github, or microsoft (the parent company) but let's not pretend market dominance and abuse of dominant position are not a real things.
  - polishTar 4y ago
    I think the parent comment is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce). TLDR: If you have a monopoly in a market, you can't use your position to get a heads up in another distinct market by bundling products together. Ex: Microsoft can't use their monopoly position in the OS market to get an advantage in browsers by bundling IE with Windows. It's my understanding that this doesn't apply if you don't have a monopoly, and it also doesn't apply unless you're actually bundling the sale of multiple things together. Doesn't seem to be relevant here IMO.
  - treis 4y ago
    >You might be confused but that's literally what you do as a business. You leverage your domain area expertise to expand into new areas of business. >or instance, Apple already knew about the portable hardware market and extended their reach into the portable music market via iPod. It used the iPod to reach the music marketplace via iTunes. Used its market dominance to create iPhone and the rest is history. Look at what you're saying here. Apple had domain experience in hardware and launched a new product (good). Then it used the dominance of that product to muscle into an entirely different market (bad). And the combination of hardware and market has led to Apple being able to extract their tax on half the music market, or whatever they have. This is exactly what we don't want and why anti-trust laws exist.
- granzymes 4y ago
  That might be true, if GiHub were a monopoly. But they are not.
  - chii 4y ago
    a lot of people confuse popular with monopoly.
    - treis 4y ago
      And even more know that you don't need to be a monopoly to violate anti-trust laws.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    In the same vein that Google are not a monopoly in search, Microsoft are not a monopoly in consumer and business OSes, Chrome is monopoly in browsers, etc. Just because there is some existing competition which has a few percent marketshare and technically it's not a monopoly doesn't materially change anything besides a pro forma excuse. Which is why Google have been propping up Mozilla, they want the excuse "but technically there's another browser". However for consumers and the market it doesn't matter that technically there's an option that practically nobody uses.
- jaredklewis 4y ago
  In what sense? Certainly not my understanding of us antitrust law.
- blackoil 4y ago
  "git hosting" is too narrow a market. Code repository may be someone interested in, there Github won't have a practical dominance. Most probably by nature of complete Github, it will come under "software development tools"
arrosenberg 4y ago
Its anticompetitive and illegal (if the government ever decides to start prosecuting people under those laws again).
- mkr-hn 4y ago
  There's a sizable fully adult cohort in tech who are young enough to, at best, have vague memories of Microsoft's antitrust troubles and not get why this is such a big deal. Tech history education could be better.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

by beachy 4y ago

treis 4y ago

You're not supposed to be able to use dominance in one market (git hosting) to gain dominance in another (AI powered code suggestions).

wfme 4y ago
What do you mean "You're not supposed to"? Is there some law that forbids this? From my (potentially naive) POV this seems to be roughly equivalent to asking physics professors to stay away from mathematics since they are likely to have some relevant cross-domain expertise.
- mkr-hn 4y ago
  Microsoft has been nailed for this exact kind of thing in the past. This isn't hypothetical.
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    it only runs afowl of antitrust laws if it solidifies an unfair monopoly and/or uses market position as a monopoly holder to prevent fair competition from emerging. most monopolies are completely legal. small town with only one gas station or one grocery store? 100% monopoly, 100% legal. there are plenty of alternatives to github, paid, free, as a service, and self-hosted. GitHub has a large market share, but no monopoly.
    - mkr-hn 4y ago
      This would, of course, need to be determined in court. Microsoft argued it had plenty of competition when the DOJ came for it over Windows and bundling. Like I said, this isn't unexplored territory for Microsoft. This is the company of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and the Halloween documents. This isn't a company with plenty of goodwill in its sails launching a hip new product. They're not Do No Evil era Google or Apple riding high on the iPod. We can't just pretend there isn't a history.
      - naikrovek 4y ago
        you're making a big assumption here, that Microsoft did not learn from their mistakes. I posit that they have indeed learned from their mistakes. 1) They train Copilot with repos hosted on github.com. 2) Users who upload code to github.com grant GitHub an explicit license[0] granting GitHub the right to show that code to others. 3) GitHub do not specify which technologies or techniques they may use to show this code to others, meaning they may use any technique they like. Microsoft have learned. And they have covered their collective asses. Users who host code on github.com agreed to these terms. Users who don't like their code showing up in Copilot should not be hosting their code on GitHub, because they agreed to have their code delivered to others when they signed up. [0]: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#d-user-generated-content https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...
        vermilingua 4y ago
        From the linked terms of service: > This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service[...] I imagine the crux of this case will be what constitutes "the Service", and whether that includes Copilot. Also whether licensing Copilot counts as selling Your Content.
        naikrovek 4y ago
        GitHub provides the code free of charge, you pay for the GPU time to train the AI model, I would assume, since that is what costs GitHub money.
  - abigail95 4y ago
    Microsoft used its OS dominance to... solidify its OS dominance? Does the law really say you can't include a free web browser if someone else created a paid one? I don't want to live in a world where potential improvements for consumers get companies sued for antitrust.
    - mkr-hn 4y ago
      I highly recommend looking into the history if this really is new to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
- notacoward 4y ago
  > Is there some law that forbids this? Yes. It's called the Sherman Act, and it's the basis of anti-trust enforcement in the US. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... <<<The Sherman Act outlaws "every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade," and any "monopolization, attempted monopolization, or conspiracy or combination to monopolize." >>> I know lots of people here don't like it, but it is the law and that was the question; "this" in parent clearly meant "use dominance in one market to gain dominance in another" in grandparent, regardless of whether that's actually the central issue here or not.
- 3836293648 4y ago
  Yes, this is the basis of antitrust law
thegrimmest 4y ago
But who gets to draw the lines? Why can't both of these be in a single market "tools for programmers"?
sushid 4y ago
You might be confused but that's literally what you do as a business. You leverage your domain area expertise to expand into new areas of business. For instance, Apple already knew about the portable hardware market and extended their reach into the portable music market via iPod. It used the iPod to reach the music marketplace via iTunes. Used its market dominance to create iPhone and the rest is history. Maybe that's a personal maxim on your part but there's no law that says if you have dominance (what does that even mean?) in one market you cannot enter another. Think about what you're saying. We'd have no multi-product company if that were the case. What does "dominance" or "market" mean anyway?
- jerojero 4y ago
  That's what you do when you are not at-risk of being a monopoly in a sector. Apple could do these things back then because they were still a relatively small company in the tech sector. But now a days things do start to get more complicated. As you point out, establishing what dominance is in a market is a tricky thing and it is why governments will investigate any potential signs of it. Now, personally I don't think this is really an issue for Github, or microsoft (the parent company) but let's not pretend market dominance and abuse of dominant position are not a real things.
- polishTar 4y ago
  I think the parent comment is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce). TLDR: If you have a monopoly in a market, you can't use your position to get a heads up in another distinct market by bundling products together. Ex: Microsoft can't use their monopoly position in the OS market to get an advantage in browsers by bundling IE with Windows. It's my understanding that this doesn't apply if you don't have a monopoly, and it also doesn't apply unless you're actually bundling the sale of multiple things together. Doesn't seem to be relevant here IMO.
- treis 4y ago
  >You might be confused but that's literally what you do as a business. You leverage your domain area expertise to expand into new areas of business. >or instance, Apple already knew about the portable hardware market and extended their reach into the portable music market via iPod. It used the iPod to reach the music marketplace via iTunes. Used its market dominance to create iPhone and the rest is history. Look at what you're saying here. Apple had domain experience in hardware and launched a new product (good). Then it used the dominance of that product to muscle into an entirely different market (bad). And the combination of hardware and market has led to Apple being able to extract their tax on half the music market, or whatever they have. This is exactly what we don't want and why anti-trust laws exist.
granzymes 4y ago
That might be true, if GiHub were a monopoly. But they are not.
- chii 4y ago
  a lot of people confuse popular with monopoly.
  - treis 4y ago
    And even more know that you don't need to be a monopoly to violate anti-trust laws.
- sofixa 4y ago
  In the same vein that Google are not a monopoly in search, Microsoft are not a monopoly in consumer and business OSes, Chrome is monopoly in browsers, etc. Just because there is some existing competition which has a few percent marketshare and technically it's not a monopoly doesn't materially change anything besides a pro forma excuse. Which is why Google have been propping up Mozilla, they want the excuse "but technically there's another browser". However for consumers and the market it doesn't matter that technically there's an option that practically nobody uses.
jaredklewis 4y ago
In what sense? Certainly not my understanding of us antitrust law.
blackoil 4y ago
"git hosting" is too narrow a market. Code repository may be someone interested in, there Github won't have a practical dominance. Most probably by nature of complete Github, it will come under "software development tools"

arrosenberg 4y ago

Its anticompetitive and illegal (if the government ever decides to start prosecuting people under those laws again).

mkr-hn 4y ago
There's a sizable fully adult cohort in tech who are young enough to, at best, have vague memories of Microsoft's antitrust troubles and not get why this is such a big deal. Tech history education could be better.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]