While I agree with your concerns about licensing and copilot, this criticism doesn't seem particularly relevant to the article that was shared.
We have a duty as practitioners in the industry to call it out when we see something wrong. If even devs aren't calling bullshit on Copilot, the media won't care, courts won't care, and it will be declared legal, and future theft will be normalized.
Its ridiculous how we all see the big tech companies doing various kinds of terrible shit and then the next new shiny thing comes along and everyone forgets all about it? Are you goldfish? What will it take to get someone to actually give a shit and stop supporting this kind of product/behavior?
Just like you're endorsing being sponsored and effectively stealing GitHub's bandwith? :)
> We have a duty as practitioners in the industry to call it out when we see something wrong.
It's wrong both ways. You accepted the service from GitHub, the free one where you get to open your account, host your code, share it etc.
What exactly did you expect? To be served for free for your entire lifetime?
Please, get off the moral highground. You ate the devil fruit, now you're whining about it. You should be smart enough to know that this kind of whining will get you nowhere. Just quit.
Yes its free, no they did not tell me or ask for my permission before using the code in this way. Free does not give them the right to break existing laws and licenses. Its pretty simple.
[1] https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-o...
In my understanding your reading is that users uploading code that they don't own the copyright to, but otherwise have the right to copy through a license, are in violation with the ToS in general.
My reading is that the license grant only applies to "Your Content" as defined in the ToS, and otherwise users are free to upload code with permissive license and it _does not grant_ additional licenses to Github.
> Certainly the GitHub TOS grants them some common-sense ability to copy the code you upload so that they can usefully host it. Can you point to the portion that allows them to use it for Copilot?
> Because I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Section D4:
> > This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service...
> The “Service” refers to the applications, software, products, and services provided by GitHub, including any Beta Previews.
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that the vitriol around Copilot stems from five factors that distinguishes it from Google:
(1) The length of the suggestions alongside some of Copilot's marketing demonstrated that perhaps non-trivial replacement of engineers with AI might not be as far-fetched or far away as most people thought. Google's autocomplete has yet to make me feel replaceable.
(2) The content of the training data had a clearer intrinsic commercial value, making perceived license violations feel more 'real'.
(3) GitHub (historically) didn't have the same reputation as Google for training AI models on data uploaded to its free services. People likely (mis)placed some trust in GitHub when they uploaded code, and this backlash is part of the adjustment process.
(4) The indication that Copilot will eventually be a paid commercial service, effectively building a commercial service off the backs of millions of open source developers. While this is perfectly legal and common across all industries, it doesn't feel good.
(5) Copilot spitting out raw training data really doesn't help its image.