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It's selfish to want people to abide by the license I released my project under? That's pure nonsense.

D13Fd 4y ago
Your code is protected by copyright. The license allows for what would otherwise be copyright infringement. But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant. It's selfish to pretend otherwise and to try to assert a copyright right that doesn't exist, for the purpose of impeding progress in a field that benefits us all.
- chlorion 4y ago
  Here is a snippet of things that copyright is intended to cover: >the right to exclude others from making certain uses of the work: copying it, making a derivative work based on that work, distributing copies of the work to the public, and publicly performing or displaying the work. So why would "training" "AI" on code with the intention of emitting derived works not be copyright infringement exactly? This product is transforming copyrighted code into something that's intended to be used or sold in other works. The snippets it emits are directly derived from copyrighted code. The most common argument against this is that humans also learn from copyrighted material. My argument against this is that CoPilot is not a human and should not be assumed to inherit rules intended for humans. >in a field that benefits us all As it stands currently CoPilot is proprietary and does not benefit anyone except for MicroSoft. If CoPilot was released under a FOSS license it would actually benefit us all. Most of the people against CoPilot are not against AI, but rather a proprietary AI product transforming FOSS work into other potentially proprietary works with the intention of profiting off of the completion service and hoarding the code that powers it.
- LtWorf 4y ago
  > But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant. The fact that you write something, doesn't automatically make that thing true. Some uses of AI were ruled not to be infringement. This is a different case which requires a different ruling.
- teddyh 4y ago
  > But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant. Well, maybe. But even if we assume that this is true, when anyone later uses the AI to reproduce a copy of the code, a copy has been made and copyright has been infringed.
  - plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
    This whole code thing is so nonsense to me. If I need a code to loop over 10 lines, I'll code a for loop the same way regardless of what I'm developing. Define for me, at what point of complexity, does code gets Copyrighted? The things copilot is outputting is literally small chunks of code that needs a lot of cleanup afterwards. Is not like I type "Build twitter for me" and BAM, I got a working clone of twitter.
    - tremon 4y ago
      Every line that you produce is copyrighted by you, automatically. There is no "obviousness" test for copyright: if you decide to code a for loop, then that for loop is copyrighted the moment you type it in. copilot is outputting literally small chunks of code that needs a lot of cleanup afterwards If you start from copyrighted chunks, then clean them, you're still violating people's copyright. Multi-million dollar lawsuits have been fought over people using small samples from other people's music, cleaning them, and releasing them as parts of their own song.
skeaker 4y ago
Well yeah, it is. Some function that you wrote years ago in an hour having one line taken out of it to be used in a project that wouldn't have made money anyways doesn't hurt you at all regardless of what license is on your project. Getting upset because "that was MINE!" does come off as very selfish.
- chlorion 4y ago
  It's not being upset over money, the point is not wanting proprietary code to include my code or code derived from mine. I don't care if people make money using GPL'd code, but I do care if they take the code and strip the license so they can use it in non-free projects.

Your code is protected by copyright. The license allows for what would otherwise be copyright infringement. But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant. It's selfish to pretend otherwise and to try to assert a copyright right that doesn't exist, for the purpose of impeding progress in a field that benefits us all.

chlorion 4y ago
Here is a snippet of things that copyright is intended to cover: >the right to exclude others from making certain uses of the work: copying it, making a derivative work based on that work, distributing copies of the work to the public, and publicly performing or displaying the work. So why would "training" "AI" on code with the intention of emitting derived works not be copyright infringement exactly? This product is transforming copyrighted code into something that's intended to be used or sold in other works. The snippets it emits are directly derived from copyrighted code. The most common argument against this is that humans also learn from copyrighted material. My argument against this is that CoPilot is not a human and should not be assumed to inherit rules intended for humans. >in a field that benefits us all As it stands currently CoPilot is proprietary and does not benefit anyone except for MicroSoft. If CoPilot was released under a FOSS license it would actually benefit us all. Most of the people against CoPilot are not against AI, but rather a proprietary AI product transforming FOSS work into other potentially proprietary works with the intention of profiting off of the completion service and hoarding the code that powers it.
LtWorf 4y ago
> But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant. The fact that you write something, doesn't automatically make that thing true. Some uses of AI were ruled not to be infringement. This is a different case which requires a different ruling.
teddyh 4y ago
> But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant. Well, maybe. But even if we assume that this is true, when anyone later uses the AI to reproduce a copy of the code, a copy has been made and copyright has been infringed.
- plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
  This whole code thing is so nonsense to me. If I need a code to loop over 10 lines, I'll code a for loop the same way regardless of what I'm developing. Define for me, at what point of complexity, does code gets Copyrighted? The things copilot is outputting is literally small chunks of code that needs a lot of cleanup afterwards. Is not like I type "Build twitter for me" and BAM, I got a working clone of twitter.
  - tremon 4y ago
    Every line that you produce is copyrighted by you, automatically. There is no "obviousness" test for copyright: if you decide to code a for loop, then that for loop is copyrighted the moment you type it in. copilot is outputting literally small chunks of code that needs a lot of cleanup afterwards If you start from copyrighted chunks, then clean them, you're still violating people's copyright. Multi-million dollar lawsuits have been fought over people using small samples from other people's music, cleaning them, and releasing them as parts of their own song.

skeaker 4y ago

Well yeah, it is. Some function that you wrote years ago in an hour having one line taken out of it to be used in a project that wouldn't have made money anyways doesn't hurt you at all regardless of what license is on your project. Getting upset because "that was MINE!" does come off as very selfish.

chlorion 4y ago
It's not being upset over money, the point is not wanting proprietary code to include my code or code derived from mine. I don't care if people make money using GPL'd code, but I do care if they take the code and strip the license so they can use it in non-free projects.