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Comment by rbarrois | Hacker News Reader

An interesting impact of this discussion is, for me: within my team at work, we're likely to forbid any use of Github co-pilot for our codebase, unless we can get a formal guarantee from Github that the generated code is actually valid for us to use.

By the way, code generated by Github co-pilot is likely incompatible with Microsoft's Contribution License Agreement [1]: "You represent that each of Your Submission is entirely Your original work".

This means that, for most open-source projects, code generated by Github co-pilot is, right now, NOT acceptable in the project.

[1] https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-...

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> This means that, for most open-source projects, code generated by Github co-pilot is, right now, NOT acceptable in the project.

For this scenario, how is using Co-Pilot generated code different from using code based on sample code, Stack Overflow answers, etc.?

I'd say that it depends on the license; for StackOverflow, it's CC-BY-SA 4.0 [1]. For sample code, that would depend on the license of the original documentation.

My point is: when I'm copying code from a source with an explicit license, I know whether I'm allowed to copy it. If I pick code from co-pilot, I have no idea (until tested by law in my jurisdiction) whether said code is public domain, AGPL, proprietary, infringing on some company's copyright.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service#licensing

That makes sense, thank you.

A number of company, including Google and probably Microsoft forbid copying code from Stack Overflow because there is no explicit license

TIL, thank you!

> forbid any use of Github co-pilot for our codebase,

I have recommended as such to the CTO and other senior engineers at the startup I work at, pending some clear legal guidance about the specific licensing.

My casual read of Copilot suggests that certain outputs would be clear and visible derivatives of GPL code, which would be _very bad_ in court- probably? Some other company can have fun in court and make case law. We have stuff to build.

How would you know if copilot was used or not?!

I'm not sure why I'm getting down voted? "We'll forbid the use of copilot in our code base" How???? How the fuck would anyone know how the code was written?

How can you generally know ? You can't, really, plagiarism is a hard problem...

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