4 ms·

So many comments like this, but none list a tangible harm that's anywhere near the millions of man hours systems like this will save. Heck, basically none (incl

So many comments like this, but none list a tangible harm that's anywhere near the millions of man hours systems like this will save. Heck, basically none (including this one!) list a harm at all!

mkmk3 4y ago
Honestly, kinda fair. How is it different to pirating anything, and the moral qualms that come in there? Some people see it as a massive issue, others don't believe the harm is significant. Probably makes an OSS dev enjoy their working being open source less, I imagine, which may have larger ramifications in terms of the ecosystem it promotes, but outside of that I'm guessing (I'm also trying to understand) it's just a matter of who's seeing the benefit from this tech. I think that's a reasonable thing to be concerned about, when wealth seems to have a tendency to centralize, and the average worker doesn't have the level of power we would ideally like.
toastal 4y ago
If it's going to do that much "good" for humanity, then the dataset should be 0BSD or CC0, not proprietary. Project Gutenberg does good by archiving and allowing access to a lot of books and everything is under Creative Commons to continue to allow people the freedom to use the data as well as attribute the original authors. GitHub isn't doing this at all and is instead selling a proprietary product built on scanning open source that didn't consent.
SantalBlush 4y ago
You could say this about all software piracy. So Microsoft can work to end software copyright instead of trying to corner the market on pirated software and asking forgiveness after the fact.
- concordDance 4y ago
  No, you can't. Because most software piracy is of saleable software. 20 line snippets are not for sale, mostly because the transaction costs are higher than the snippet value.
trention 4y ago
Eventually (not in the next 5 years but probably in the next 15) a system like this is going to lower the market salaries of developers (or make some of them outright unemployable). While using their own code as input to achieve that, without ever obtaining actual permission. Seems like a pretty tangible harm to me.

So many comments like this, but none list a tangible harm that's anywhere near the millions of man hours systems like this will save. Heck, basically none (including this one!) list a harm at all!

mkmk3 4y ago

Honestly, kinda fair. How is it different to pirating anything, and the moral qualms that come in there? Some people see it as a massive issue, others don't believe the harm is significant. Probably makes an OSS dev enjoy their working being open source less, I imagine, which may have larger ramifications in terms of the ecosystem it promotes, but outside of that I'm guessing (I'm also trying to understand) it's just a matter of who's seeing the benefit from this tech. I think that's a reasonable thing to be concerned about, when wealth seems to have a tendency to centralize, and the average worker doesn't have the level of power we would ideally like.

toastal 4y ago

If it's going to do that much "good" for humanity, then the dataset should be 0BSD or CC0, not proprietary. Project Gutenberg does good by archiving and allowing access to a lot of books and everything is under Creative Commons to continue to allow people the freedom to use the data as well as attribute the original authors. GitHub isn't doing this at all and is instead selling a proprietary product built on scanning open source that didn't consent.

SantalBlush 4y ago

You could say this about all software piracy. So Microsoft can work to end software copyright instead of trying to corner the market on pirated software and asking forgiveness after the fact.

concordDance 4y ago
No, you can't. Because most software piracy is of saleable software. 20 line snippets are not for sale, mostly because the transaction costs are higher than the snippet value.

trention 4y ago

Eventually (not in the next 5 years but probably in the next 15) a system like this is going to lower the market salaries of developers (or make some of them outright unemployable). While using their own code as input to achieve that, without ever obtaining actual permission. Seems like a pretty tangible harm to me.