4 ms·

Attributions are fundamental to open source? I thought having source openly available was fundamental to open source (and allowed use without liability/warranty

by ugh123 4y ago

Attributions are fundamental to open source? I thought having source openly available was fundamental to open source (and allowed use without liability/warranty) as per apache, mit, and other licenses. If they just stick to using permissive-licensed source code then i'm not sure what the actual 'harm' is with co-pilot. If they auto-generate an acknowledgement file for all source repos used in co-pilot, and then asked clients of co-pilot to ship that file with their product, would that be enough? Call it "The Extended Github Co-Pilot Derivative Use License" or something.

TAForObvReasons 4y ago
Attributions are fundamental to permissive licenses as well. It's worth reading the licenses in question. MIT: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. This is the "attribution" requirement that even a Copilot trained on only-MIT code would miss. If it were just about sharing code, there are public domain declarations and variants like CC0 licenses
neongreen 4y ago
Apparently they are using GPL-licensed code as well, see https://twitter.com/DocSparse/status/1581461734665367554 https://twitter.com/DocSparse/status/1581461734665367554 After five minutes of googling I'm still not sure if using MIT code requires an attribution, but many people claim it does, see https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/8163 https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/8163 as one example
- xigoi 4y ago
  From GitHub itself (emphasis mine): > A short and simple permissive license with conditions only requiring preservation of copyright and license notices. Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms and without source code.
- nyberg 4y ago
  MIT explicitly states that it does in the license.
- account42 4y ago
  You could have read the MIT license in its entirity in less than five minutes. It is very clear that the preserving attribution is a required condition. Other permissive licenses even explicitly require attribution in binaries / documentation. MIT License: Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
heavyset_go 4y ago
Attribution and inclusion of copies of licenses are stipulations in almost all of the popular open source licenses, including BSD and MIT licenses.
- bobbruno 4y ago
  True and valid. But all those clauses, AFAIK, were written with the mindset of ïf you want to run this code (particularly, but not limited to, for profit), you have to at least attribute it”. Copilot allegedly doesn’t run that code - it claims to read it, understand how it works and then generate its own code that does an equivalent function if requested. It’s up to the lawsuit to decide if that’s what it actually does, but my point is that the licenses simply did not cover this usage pattern, as much as no open source license requires any kind of action from someone who’s just reading or studying the code.
Cort3z 4y ago
People would likely not share any code if they could not trust that their work would be respected, and attributed. So yes, I believe it to be fundamental to open source.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Maybe researchers that are used to hunting for publications and attributions. If I’m sharing my code publicly, it’s because I want it to be _used_.
  - mplewis 4y ago
    I use a license which requires attribution. You do not speak for me.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    People share proprietary code publicly. And the fact that you're allowed to read a book doesn't (currently) give you the right to copy it and redistribute the copy.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      It does give you the right to write excerpts from memory though. If it happens to exactly match the text in the book, nobody gets excited about that, even if you could potentially rewrite the whole book.
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      Almost everyone has learned some amount of English by reading copyrighted books.
    - bobbruno 4y ago
      If I read 10 or 20 books about a topic and then go teach that topic to others, do I have to attribute each thing to all the authors from where I learned it? And what if I come up with my own interpretation of a topic, do I have to trace it back to all interpretations of all the authors that influenced it? Even more, do the previous authors also have to do that and do I have to quote all the chain of references? If not, why an ML model that is supposed to learn how coding works, not memorize pieces of code verbatim, should have to “because of copyright laws”?

by ugh123 4y ago

TAForObvReasons 4y ago

Attributions are fundamental to permissive licenses as well. It's worth reading the licenses in question. MIT: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. This is the "attribution" requirement that even a Copilot trained on only-MIT code would miss. If it were just about sharing code, there are public domain declarations and variants like CC0 licenses

neongreen 4y ago

Apparently they are using GPL-licensed code as well, see https://twitter.com/DocSparse/status/1581461734665367554 https://twitter.com/DocSparse/status/1581461734665367554 After five minutes of googling I'm still not sure if using MIT code requires an attribution, but many people claim it does, see https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/8163 https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/8163 as one example

xigoi 4y ago
From GitHub itself (emphasis mine): > A short and simple permissive license with conditions only requiring preservation of copyright and license notices. Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms and without source code.
nyberg 4y ago
MIT explicitly states that it does in the license.
account42 4y ago
You could have read the MIT license in its entirity in less than five minutes. It is very clear that the preserving attribution is a required condition. Other permissive licenses even explicitly require attribution in binaries / documentation. MIT License: Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

heavyset_go 4y ago

Attribution and inclusion of copies of licenses are stipulations in almost all of the popular open source licenses, including BSD and MIT licenses.

bobbruno 4y ago
True and valid. But all those clauses, AFAIK, were written with the mindset of ïf you want to run this code (particularly, but not limited to, for profit), you have to at least attribute it”. Copilot allegedly doesn’t run that code - it claims to read it, understand how it works and then generate its own code that does an equivalent function if requested. It’s up to the lawsuit to decide if that’s what it actually does, but my point is that the licenses simply did not cover this usage pattern, as much as no open source license requires any kind of action from someone who’s just reading or studying the code.

Cort3z 4y ago

People would likely not share any code if they could not trust that their work would be respected, and attributed. So yes, I believe it to be fundamental to open source.

Aeolun 4y ago
Maybe researchers that are used to hunting for publications and attributions. If I’m sharing my code publicly, it’s because I want it to be _used_.
- mplewis 4y ago
  I use a license which requires attribution. You do not speak for me.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  People share proprietary code publicly. And the fact that you're allowed to read a book doesn't (currently) give you the right to copy it and redistribute the copy.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    It does give you the right to write excerpts from memory though. If it happens to exactly match the text in the book, nobody gets excited about that, even if you could potentially rewrite the whole book.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    Almost everyone has learned some amount of English by reading copyrighted books.
  - bobbruno 4y ago
    If I read 10 or 20 books about a topic and then go teach that topic to others, do I have to attribute each thing to all the authors from where I learned it? And what if I come up with my own interpretation of a topic, do I have to trace it back to all interpretations of all the authors that influenced it? Even more, do the previous authors also have to do that and do I have to quote all the chain of references? If not, why an ML model that is supposed to learn how coding works, not memorize pieces of code verbatim, should have to “because of copyright laws”?