ghoward

98 ms·

691.
by ghoward 5y ago
That is a good point, but easily fixed. Will do that now. Edit: done. They are under the CC-BY-ND license now.
692.
by ghoward 5y ago
But at the same time, a compiler does a deterministic transformation of its inputs, and we still count its output as under copyright and license. copyrighted input -> compiler -> copyrighted output
693.
by ghoward 5y ago
This is why I relicensed my code [1] yesterday to a license I wrote [2], which is designed to poison the well for machine learning. [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2021/07/poisoning-github-copilot-and... [2]: https:
694.
by ghoward 5y ago
Unlikely stuff will always happen with enough use. There are billions of lines of code in the world. There will be enough copyright violations. Even on single multi-million line codebases, there will be violations.
695.
by ghoward 5y ago
You have a point, which is why the legal system would still require that a copy be substantial before they count it as infringing. I would argue that Copilot has already been shown to copy substantial portions, though.
696.
by ghoward 5y ago
That's true, if the employee truly didn't know what their employer was doing. At this point, however, the age restriction should have given it away. If it's not allowed for children, it's because of COPPA. And if you&#x2
697.
by ghoward 5y ago
I agree, although I am one of the younger generation that believes what the older generation is saying on this one.
698.
by ghoward 5y ago
https://drewdevault.com/2020/05/05/We-are-complicit-in-our-e...
699.
by ghoward 5y ago
You have good points. I argue that the output of an algorithm has the same copyright as the inputs to the algorithm, and that's because we use compilers (algorithms) to transform source code all the time already, and no one says that t
700.
by ghoward 5y ago
Their argument defending the output side doesn't hold water, IMO. If Copilot produces exact copies verbatim, even some of the time, then as long as customers don't have access to the code used to generate the model, how can they b
701.
by ghoward 5y ago
The licenses that I am making implicitly acknowledge the argument that training an ML model is fair use. However, GitHub said nothing about the output of the model being fair use. My license will say that the output of their model is unde
702.
by ghoward 5y ago
You said that you're "not so sure that a trained model does (or even should) be subject to the copyright of the inputs." You missed my point. I'm not saying that the model is subject to the copyright of the inputs; I&#
703.
by ghoward 5y ago
Ah, I see. I argue that, even if training a dataset is fair use, distributing the result is copyright infringement. I would want my license to make that part clearer.
704.
by ghoward 5y ago
I wish. I just want users to know what rights they have. Ultimately, I want my software to serve end users, not companies. If companies add value for users with my software, that's exactly what I want. But stripping licenses away so
705.
by ghoward 5y ago
I don't entirely agree. Whereas using the browser's copy feature requires the user to have intent to use it, getting Copilot to produce exact code does not. And proving that intent is not easy. I think companies will see that such
706.
by ghoward 5y ago
The answer to your first question is for the courts to decide, unfortunately. However, for my purposes, using a new license with particular terms would only be to make companies like GitHub pause and think before using my code as "trai
707.
by ghoward 5y ago
I understand your concerns. Honestly, with this whole debacle, I am not going to be accepting outside contributions anyway. I also understand the concern with a problematic license. However, I don't plan to make a specific exemption ab
708.
by ghoward 5y ago
First, I did not come up with the term "code laundering." I cannot claim credit for that; I saw it first on HN on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27729209 somewhere. Second, you are correct that Copilot'
709.
by ghoward 5y ago
You are correct that they are not necessarily contracts, but they can be. (See https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/12/27/War-on-License-Not... and search for "Blue Oak avoids this theoretical complexit
710.
by ghoward 5y ago
wizzwizz4 is correct. Also, I have explicit clauses saying that GPL/AGPL dominate. But yes, my licenses may be incompatible (one-way) with permissive licenses. I say "one-way" because code with permissive licenses can still b
711.
by ghoward 5y ago
Not GP. Yes, it is, because that means that the algorithm will produce that copyrighted code regardless of the intent of the person who makes it misbehave. People could both accidentally and "accidentally" make it reproduce copyri
712.
by ghoward 5y ago
I don't want to agree with you that an autocomplete tool is a relatively benign place to start, mostly because I am upset about GitHub using my code in this way. But you are correct. But let's fix this before it goes further, espe
713.
by ghoward 5y ago
If a branch is just a reference, then how that reference changes over time will be lost. As astrange says, that info will be in the reflog, but the reflog is subject to GC. Once a GC happens, that info is forgotten.
714.
by ghoward 5y ago
If the user of the robot is responsible for the copyright violation, then the user of Copilot is responsible, correct? If that's the case, then there will not be any users of Copilot except those that unknowingly open themselves to lia
715.
by ghoward 5y ago
Not GP. I may be wrong here, but I would argue that git does forget something: it forgets where the branch reference used to point when a new commit is made on that branch. If a commit has more than one parent, that means some informati
716.
by ghoward 5y ago
I personally have never heard of TabNine until now. Now that I have, I don't want my code to be part of that.
717.
by ghoward 5y ago
For the record, I moved all of my code away from GitHub because I didn't like them. Now I self-host, with all of the work that entails. So I think I have a right to be mad when they do something like this to code I previously stored on
718.
by ghoward 5y ago
The other thing is that Source Hut is immensely complicated to set up. I wish I could love it, but Gitea was just so much easier to get going.
719.
by ghoward 5y ago
You have good points, but I would argue that Copilot itself is the entity distributing copyrighted code since there are times when it copies code verbatim. That puts the legal onus on Copilot itself.
720.
by ghoward 5y ago
There have been a lot of tweets from developers with access raving about how cool it is.

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