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> I still think "training is fair use" still has a leg to stand on, though If that's the case, we need to serious re-consider how we reward Open Source as a so

> I still think "training is fair use" still has a leg to stand on, though If that's the case, we need to serious re-consider how we reward Open Source as a society (I think that would be fantastic anyway!) -- we have people producing knowledge and others profiting directly from this material, producing new content and new code that's incompatible with the original license. You make GPL code, a make an AI that learns from GPL code, shouldn't its output be GPL licensed as well? I think meanwhile the most reasonable solution is that an AI should always produce content compatible with the training material licenses. So if you want to use GPL training sets, you can only use that to create GPL-compatible code. If you use public domain (or e.g. 0BSD?) training sets, you can produce any code I guess.

nradov 4y ago
If open source code authors (and other content creators) don't want their IP to be used in AI training data sets then they can simply change the license terms to prohibit that use. And if they really want to control how their IP is used then they shouldn't host it on GitHub in the first place. Of course Microsoft is going to look for ways to monetize that data.
- b112 4y ago
  And if they really want to control how their IP is used then they shouldn't host it on GitHub in the first place No. It's called copyright, it is enforceable, and that's the control. GPL source code is available everywhere, in all formats, in textbooks, on CDs, on websites, but it is still gpl. And Microsoft doesn't get to scrub the license.
- b3morales 4y ago
  > they can simply change the license terms to prohibit that use GitHub's argument* is not that they're following the license but that the license does not apply to their use. So they would continue to ignore any provision that says they can't use the material for training. Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740001 Moving off GitHub is a better step at a practical level. But again they claim the license doesn't matter, so even if it's hosted publicly elsewhere they would (presumably) maintain that they can still scoop it up. It just becomes more work, for them, to do so. *Which is completely wrong in my opinion, for the record
b112 4y ago
You make GPL code, a make an AI that learns from GPL code, shouldn't its output be GPL licensed as well? I think, for the desired outcome to occur, you should instead ask: You write close sourced code, then a make an AI that learns from that code, shouldn't its output be licensed as well? Ask the above, and suddenly Microsoft will agree.
- skissane 4y ago
  > You write close sourced code, then a make an AI that learns from that code, shouldn't its output be licensed as well? > Ask the above, and suddenly Microsoft will agree. Does Microsoft actually agree? Many people have posted leaked/stolen Microsoft code (such as Windows, MS-DOS 6) to GitHub. Microsoft doesn't seem to make a very serious effort to stop it – sometimes they DMCA repos hosting it, but others have stayed up for ages. They could easily build some system to automatically detect and takedown leaks of their own code, but they haven't. Given this reality, if they trained GitHub Copilot on all public GitHub repos, it seems likely that its training included leaked Microsoft source code. If true, that means Microsoft doesn't actually have a problem with people using the outputs of an AI trained on their own closed source code.
- andybak 4y ago
  Depends if you think the GPL means "copyright is great!" vs "let's use their biggest weapon against them..." It's a surprisingly subtle distinction. EDIT - if I squint hard enough in exactly the right way, there's a sense in which CoPilot etc aligns perfectly with the goals of the free software movement. A world in which you can use it as a code copyright laundry might be a world where code is actually free. Is that any weirder than bizarre legal contortions such as the Google/Oracle "9 lines of code"? Or the whole dance around reverse engineering: "It's OK if you never saw the actual code but you're allowed to read comprehensive notes from someone who did"..? There's a ton of examples like this. Tell me with a straight face that there's a clear moral line in either copyright or patent law as it relates to software. IP is a mess and it's not clear who benefits. Is a world where code isn't subject to copyright so bad?
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
kmeisthax 4y ago
> You make GPL code, a make an AI that learns from GPL code, shouldn't its output be GPL licensed as well? If the output (not just the model) can be determined to be a derivative work of the input, or the model is overfit and regurgitating training set data, then yes. It should. And a court would make the same demands, because fair use is intransitive - you cannot reach through a fair use to make an unfair use. So each model invocation creates a new question of "did I just copy GPL code or not".
- gnramires 4y ago
  It would be an essential feature, imo, to have this 'near-verbatim check' for copyleft code. Overall it feels like it's a bit too much of specialized learning on GPL/Copyleft code to be fair. It's not like a human that reads some source code and gets an idea how it works. It's really learning code from scratch on Copyleft code, without which it would likely perform much worse and not generate a number of examples. It's not just copy-paste, but it's closer on the spectrum to copy paste than just super-abstract inspiration to feel fair. As others have said, I don't think it would be fine (specially from big companies pov.) to decompile proprietary code (or just grab publicly available but illegal to reproduce code) and have AIs learn from that in a way that seems different in scope and ability to human research and reverse engineering. I think we need a good tradeoff that isn't ludditism (that would reject a benefit for us all, i.e. that is good for everyone), but that still promotes and maintains open source software. In this case it's really a public "good" that's being seized and commercialized, that doesn't seem quite right: make copilot public, or use only permitted code (or share your revenue with developers -- although that would seem more complicated and up to each copyright holder to re-license for this usage). I remember not long ago MS declaring Open Source was a kind of "Cancer", now they're relying on it to sell their programming AIs. I personally think Open Source is quite the opposite of cancer, it is usually an unmitigated social good. Much of the same could be said for the case of artists an generative AI art. And this isn't even starting on how we move forward as a society that has highly automated most jobs and needs to distribute the resources and wealth in a good way to enable greatest wellbeing for all beings.
emodendroket 4y ago
> If that's the case, we need to serious re-consider how we reward Open Source as a society (I think that would be fantastic anyway!) -- we have people producing knowledge and others profiting directly from this material, producing new content and new code that's incompatible with the original license. Is that new? If I include some excerpt from copyrighted material in my own work and it's deemed to be fair use, that doesn't limit my right to profit from the work, sell the copyright to someone else, and so on, does it?

nradov 4y ago

If open source code authors (and other content creators) don't want their IP to be used in AI training data sets then they can simply change the license terms to prohibit that use. And if they really want to control how their IP is used then they shouldn't host it on GitHub in the first place. Of course Microsoft is going to look for ways to monetize that data.

b112 4y ago
And if they really want to control how their IP is used then they shouldn't host it on GitHub in the first place No. It's called copyright, it is enforceable, and that's the control. GPL source code is available everywhere, in all formats, in textbooks, on CDs, on websites, but it is still gpl. And Microsoft doesn't get to scrub the license.
b3morales 4y ago
> they can simply change the license terms to prohibit that use GitHub's argument* is not that they're following the license but that the license does not apply to their use. So they would continue to ignore any provision that says they can't use the material for training. Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740001 Moving off GitHub is a better step at a practical level. But again they claim the license doesn't matter, so even if it's hosted publicly elsewhere they would (presumably) maintain that they can still scoop it up. It just becomes more work, for them, to do so. *Which is completely wrong in my opinion, for the record

b112 4y ago

You make GPL code, a make an AI that learns from GPL code, shouldn't its output be GPL licensed as well? I think, for the desired outcome to occur, you should instead ask: You write close sourced code, then a make an AI that learns from that code, shouldn't its output be licensed as well? Ask the above, and suddenly Microsoft will agree.

skissane 4y ago
> You write close sourced code, then a make an AI that learns from that code, shouldn't its output be licensed as well? > Ask the above, and suddenly Microsoft will agree. Does Microsoft actually agree? Many people have posted leaked/stolen Microsoft code (such as Windows, MS-DOS 6) to GitHub. Microsoft doesn't seem to make a very serious effort to stop it – sometimes they DMCA repos hosting it, but others have stayed up for ages. They could easily build some system to automatically detect and takedown leaks of their own code, but they haven't. Given this reality, if they trained GitHub Copilot on all public GitHub repos, it seems likely that its training included leaked Microsoft source code. If true, that means Microsoft doesn't actually have a problem with people using the outputs of an AI trained on their own closed source code.
andybak 4y ago
Depends if you think the GPL means "copyright is great!" vs "let's use their biggest weapon against them..." It's a surprisingly subtle distinction. EDIT - if I squint hard enough in exactly the right way, there's a sense in which CoPilot etc aligns perfectly with the goals of the free software movement. A world in which you can use it as a code copyright laundry might be a world where code is actually free. Is that any weirder than bizarre legal contortions such as the Google/Oracle "9 lines of code"? Or the whole dance around reverse engineering: "It's OK if you never saw the actual code but you're allowed to read comprehensive notes from someone who did"..? There's a ton of examples like this. Tell me with a straight face that there's a clear moral line in either copyright or patent law as it relates to software. IP is a mess and it's not clear who benefits. Is a world where code isn't subject to copyright so bad?
- kmeisthax 4y ago

kmeisthax 4y ago

> You make GPL code, a make an AI that learns from GPL code, shouldn't its output be GPL licensed as well? If the output (not just the model) can be determined to be a derivative work of the input, or the model is overfit and regurgitating training set data, then yes. It should. And a court would make the same demands, because fair use is intransitive - you cannot reach through a fair use to make an unfair use. So each model invocation creates a new question of "did I just copy GPL code or not".

gnramires 4y ago
It would be an essential feature, imo, to have this 'near-verbatim check' for copyleft code. Overall it feels like it's a bit too much of specialized learning on GPL/Copyleft code to be fair. It's not like a human that reads some source code and gets an idea how it works. It's really learning code from scratch on Copyleft code, without which it would likely perform much worse and not generate a number of examples. It's not just copy-paste, but it's closer on the spectrum to copy paste than just super-abstract inspiration to feel fair. As others have said, I don't think it would be fine (specially from big companies pov.) to decompile proprietary code (or just grab publicly available but illegal to reproduce code) and have AIs learn from that in a way that seems different in scope and ability to human research and reverse engineering. I think we need a good tradeoff that isn't ludditism (that would reject a benefit for us all, i.e. that is good for everyone), but that still promotes and maintains open source software. In this case it's really a public "good" that's being seized and commercialized, that doesn't seem quite right: make copilot public, or use only permitted code (or share your revenue with developers -- although that would seem more complicated and up to each copyright holder to re-license for this usage). I remember not long ago MS declaring Open Source was a kind of "Cancer", now they're relying on it to sell their programming AIs. I personally think Open Source is quite the opposite of cancer, it is usually an unmitigated social good. Much of the same could be said for the case of artists an generative AI art. And this isn't even starting on how we move forward as a society that has highly automated most jobs and needs to distribute the resources and wealth in a good way to enable greatest wellbeing for all beings.

emodendroket 4y ago

> If that's the case, we need to serious re-consider how we reward Open Source as a society (I think that would be fantastic anyway!) -- we have people producing knowledge and others profiting directly from this material, producing new content and new code that's incompatible with the original license. Is that new? If I include some excerpt from copyrighted material in my own work and it's deemed to be fair use, that doesn't limit my right to profit from the work, sell the copyright to someone else, and so on, does it?