3 ms·

It boggles the mind. I was also in disbelief when I saw this post.

ThrowawayR2 4y ago
You do have to admit that it is Microsoft (and the other vendors of similar CoPilot-like services) that are on the side of "Information wants to be free!" this time. The irony of FOSS advocates reversing course on their own principles to oppose it is deep indeed.
- bugfix-66 4y ago
  You can't take a person's name off their work and sell it. People who work hard to produce open source software expect credit and acknowledgement for their work. That's why almost every license has an attribution clause. If you don't want credit for your work, you use the MIT No Attribution License: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT-0 https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT-0 Not widely used, as you might expect.
  - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
    Such a short-sighted view. The grand goal of FOSS was the abolition of copyright protection for code and and the end of proprietary software, was it not? Credit and acknowledgment doesn't even figure into it. What is a ML model that has knowledge of huge swaths of humanity's code (eventually all of it) and can serve as an assistant to build any kind of software on demand if not a huge milestone on the road to the total software freedom envisioned by RMS and GNU? People will be able to build whatever software they want, easily and at any time, and whatever the code they finally wind up with will even feed back into making the ML model even better for the future. One could still build closed source software or harp about "credit" but why bother? The ML model would replicate anything with a modest bit of effort. It might not have been the path to end-user freedom that the early FOSS proponents imagined but, if it works, that's victory.
    - Eleison23 4y ago
      No, that was not the grand goal by any stretch of the imagination. "Copyleft" protections depend on copyright protections. The reason the GNU GPL can be viral is because the license is preserved from one instance of the code to the next. If credit is not being given, then how can the GPL survive and perpetuate its virality? RMS wanted software to "be free, like air". Free software is not gained by putting it into proprietary code without licensing it. Free software is not served by filing off the serial numbers and scattering it to the four winds. The writers of free software should be given credit and they also deserve to earn a living from writing it, if they so desire. CoPilot threatens to rob them of that livelihood by side-stepping IP protections.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      > The ML model would replicate anything with a modest bit of effort. Yeah, by stealing it. Last time someone wrote a comment on HN on this topic he insulted a library author and said something like "you are just bitter that eventually this AI software will be able to write your opensource library based on the GitHub description alone" Well, of course it does, it can just literally search through GitHub and produce a verbatim copy.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
  No, one does not, in fact, have to admit that. Your statement represents an opinion.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- imtringued 4y ago
  You mean they want to abolish intellectual property by allowing proprietary code fed through the AI to be stripped of copyright? Because that would be the end of copyright.

You do have to admit that it is Microsoft (and the other vendors of similar CoPilot-like services) that are on the side of "Information wants to be free!" this time. The irony of FOSS advocates reversing course on their own principles to oppose it is deep indeed.

bugfix-66 4y ago
You can't take a person's name off their work and sell it. People who work hard to produce open source software expect credit and acknowledgement for their work. That's why almost every license has an attribution clause. If you don't want credit for your work, you use the MIT No Attribution License: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT-0 https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT-0 Not widely used, as you might expect.
- ThrowawayR2 4y ago
  Such a short-sighted view. The grand goal of FOSS was the abolition of copyright protection for code and and the end of proprietary software, was it not? Credit and acknowledgment doesn't even figure into it. What is a ML model that has knowledge of huge swaths of humanity's code (eventually all of it) and can serve as an assistant to build any kind of software on demand if not a huge milestone on the road to the total software freedom envisioned by RMS and GNU? People will be able to build whatever software they want, easily and at any time, and whatever the code they finally wind up with will even feed back into making the ML model even better for the future. One could still build closed source software or harp about "credit" but why bother? The ML model would replicate anything with a modest bit of effort. It might not have been the path to end-user freedom that the early FOSS proponents imagined but, if it works, that's victory.
  - Eleison23 4y ago
    No, that was not the grand goal by any stretch of the imagination. "Copyleft" protections depend on copyright protections. The reason the GNU GPL can be viral is because the license is preserved from one instance of the code to the next. If credit is not being given, then how can the GPL survive and perpetuate its virality? RMS wanted software to "be free, like air". Free software is not gained by putting it into proprietary code without licensing it. Free software is not served by filing off the serial numbers and scattering it to the four winds. The writers of free software should be given credit and they also deserve to earn a living from writing it, if they so desire. CoPilot threatens to rob them of that livelihood by side-stepping IP protections.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    > The ML model would replicate anything with a modest bit of effort. Yeah, by stealing it. Last time someone wrote a comment on HN on this topic he insulted a library author and said something like "you are just bitter that eventually this AI software will be able to write your opensource library based on the GitHub description alone" Well, of course it does, it can just literally search through GitHub and produce a verbatim copy.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
No, one does not, in fact, have to admit that. Your statement represents an opinion.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
imtringued 4y ago
You mean they want to abolish intellectual property by allowing proprietary code fed through the AI to be stripped of copyright? Because that would be the end of copyright.