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> And who is to say that people who want to copy your code without adhering to your license terms or pay won't go to extra lengths? or am I missing something he

by nl 2y ago

> And who is to say that people who want to copy your code without adhering to your license terms or pay won't go to extra lengths? or am I missing something here? It seems like they could just download your code from Github and violate your license like that so.. unclear why they'd bother doing it via copilot.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
Copilot cooyright-washes the license. So even we'll behaved devs could unknowingly copy code without complying with the license.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Although legally there may be a problem, in practice this seems to be a bit of a "so what?" scenario. Our hypothetical dev is using a tool that writes a function. It writes the function. The dev was going to get a function that did what he wanted one way or another so it isn't clear that it makes much difference if the function happens to be a clone of a copyrighted function. If it were my GPLed code being copied, it doesn't seem to make any difference whether I press copyright claims or not. It won't help me compete against this dev's company. They'd use Copilot to rewrite the code differently. The speed of improvement in code-writing tools doesn't give me much hope that my code is uniquely clever.
- cthalupa 2y ago
  It's unclear to me that that is the case. If I prompt an image generation model specifically to generate an unlicensed picture of Batman, I do not suspect that a judge is going to be sympathetic to the argument that the t-shirt I was selling was made by DALL-E so I should be free of any copyright infringement claims against me. Why would specifically prompting the LLM to generate similarly copyrighted code be any different? That's what's being discussed here - that people will "go the extra lengths" to intentionally copy your code. The "It wasn't me, it was the tool, even though I directed the tool quite specifically to do the thing that happened" is not a new defense in the legal systems of the world. We are already generally are able to deal with these without significant issue.
  - nl 2y ago
    It's very unusual this happens for non-boilerplate code unless you deliberately disable the duplicate the duplicate filter.
- squigz 2y ago
  > reproduction doesn't usually happen unless you go to extra lengths to make it.
strunz 2y ago
Because then you can blame it on Copilot instead of outright stealing

by nl 2y ago

paulryanrogers 2y ago

Copilot cooyright-washes the license. So even we'll behaved devs could unknowingly copy code without complying with the license.

roenxi 2y ago
Although legally there may be a problem, in practice this seems to be a bit of a "so what?" scenario. Our hypothetical dev is using a tool that writes a function. It writes the function. The dev was going to get a function that did what he wanted one way or another so it isn't clear that it makes much difference if the function happens to be a clone of a copyrighted function. If it were my GPLed code being copied, it doesn't seem to make any difference whether I press copyright claims or not. It won't help me compete against this dev's company. They'd use Copilot to rewrite the code differently. The speed of improvement in code-writing tools doesn't give me much hope that my code is uniquely clever.
cthalupa 2y ago
It's unclear to me that that is the case. If I prompt an image generation model specifically to generate an unlicensed picture of Batman, I do not suspect that a judge is going to be sympathetic to the argument that the t-shirt I was selling was made by DALL-E so I should be free of any copyright infringement claims against me. Why would specifically prompting the LLM to generate similarly copyrighted code be any different? That's what's being discussed here - that people will "go the extra lengths" to intentionally copy your code. The "It wasn't me, it was the tool, even though I directed the tool quite specifically to do the thing that happened" is not a new defense in the legal systems of the world. We are already generally are able to deal with these without significant issue.
- nl 2y ago
  It's very unusual this happens for non-boilerplate code unless you deliberately disable the duplicate the duplicate filter.
squigz 2y ago
> reproduction doesn't usually happen unless you go to extra lengths to make it.

strunz 2y ago

Because then you can blame it on Copilot instead of outright stealing