You don't accept arguments against the use of Copilot from people unless they... use it?
That's a nifty way to ignore any and all criticism of Copilot, or indeed any discussion about any ethical issue ever.
Smells like: “ I stole this lousy apple that wasn’t any good” Then why did you steal it?
Put your money where your mouth is, Microsoft, train copilot on your own code!!!
Don’t wanna train it with windows 11 code? Prefer to hijack others projects and use their for your needs and then pretend thst insulting others and calling their code worthless will get you off the hook????
Backfire
The lousy code trained copilot in what a switch statement looks like so it can autocomplete mine for me
> You don't accept arguments against the use of Copilot from people unless they... use it?
> That's a nifty way to ignore any and all criticism of Copilot, or indeed any discussion about any ethical issue ever.
"I only listen to people who agree with me, but to make that sound legitimate, I have a somewhat indirect way of saying so."
Because it's useful, then it's not a problem?
Well, it's also useful to send our non recyclable trash to 3rd world countries and every 1st World country should try it. It will definitely make the consequences less serious if everyone does it.
Not apples to apples but I guess you get the picture.
It’s a net boon for Microsoft in their efforts to rule the world.
It’s a net loss for society and ethics.
Open up copilot code, Microsoft, if you are so sure that everyone must wear transparent underwear let’s see you wearing some. Train copilot on windows 11 code. It’s not public domain.
Truth matters. Lies matter
Github make a convenient way to search and contextualise this publicly available code and paste it into your code (adjusting local scope, format, language along the way). Suddenly we have crossed an ethical line!?
Which ethical line? Are you pretending people never copy and pasted open source code before copilot? Are you pretending open source code never copy and pasted other open source code? That we were in an ethically pure world until copilot came along?
This code has different licenses. You can't just copy code randomly without checking license first.
Copilot serves it stripped of the license to unaware users. Even if copilot user wants only to reuse code licensed in a way that allows it copilot will serve him code from restrictive licenses without him being aware.
GitHub doesn’t force you to accept the license in the repository before showing you the code.
What's the harm, specifically?
Say it copies that snippet of workflow scheduling code I made at work yesterday or the greasemonkey script I made in my own time.
How is my life worse?
See your sister comment's child for my reply.
It's sort of like a power tool — sure, you could use a screwdriver, but a drill with a screwdriver attachment will be quicker. Hammers are good, nail guns are quicker. You'd never expect someone to use a drill with sd attachment if they'd never used a screwdriver before.
There are for sure things to be improved, such as the recent post on how you could put in a very specific seed and get out a specific function that it shouldn't. The answer here isn't to shut down the project, at a net loss for everyone, but to find ways to improve it.
As others have said, with Copilot gone and the new demand created, the vacuum will bring in community projects that will happily scrape every public repository they can get their hands on.
I use copilot everyday, I love it, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth knowing that people out there worked really hard on their code and harder on building OSS licences just for Microsoft to throw all that out of the window.
Feels like licenses don't matter anymore. My own code doesn't matter much, but it's about principals dude, licenses are there and they should be respected, if not, then it's just anarchy, and we all know anarchy only works in very specific scenarios, Microsoft is not apart of any of those scenarios.
I disagree, and this does not hold up generally: We can, and should, argue things we have not tried or experienced, like heroin and murder. What makes it so that this has to be tried?
> It's the bare minimum to make an informed opinion.
Only if the usefulness is what is in question. But it is not.
I believe the argument being made is that in _actual, real-world_ use of copilot, no copyright infringement happens. So it's not just about usefulness.
How would you know though? The burden of proof is on Copilot. Especially now that it has been shown to spit out copyrighted code.
/s
It's not that you absolutely have to have experience with something, but you'd be foolish to discount the input of people who do. In debates about drug policy I try to be polite to people with zero first hand experience, but their contributions are rarely of interest. Murder is a bit more abstract insofar as anyone who has fully experienced it by definition didn't survive to testify, but I give a lot more weight to the views of people that have first-hand knowledge of violence and crime.
It's not that you shouldn't weigh in on a topic without first hand experience, but that it's a good idea to specify the scope of your understanding, or frame uncertainties as open questions rather than assumptions.
I tried telling that it requires a credit card number to try it but he didn't believe me… I guess the thought that non-microsoft employees have to pay for microsoft stuff didn't occur.
A 3 line boilerplate is neither novel nor a major part of the original.
The example cited by the OP is not a three line code sample - if you've ever done matrix coding, you know that sparse matrix operations are not simple.
Sure you can reduce it to a function call, but then you have library usage instead of code theft.
I think actually perhaps this is a way copilot could ethically move forward - instead of lifting code verbatim if it merely suggested libraries and approaches "here is an example of sparse matrix filtering and some libraries which do it", that would be both useful and ethical, presuming it does not obscure the license.
From where I sit, the complainant has found an extremely convoluted (and buggy) way to copy-paste their own code and is very upset about it. By similar logic, we should restrict the use of ctrl-c and ctrl-v, because they allow very simple infringement of open source licenses. Find a sparse matrix multiplication library which uses the copied code without attribution and you can take them to court; the law is already sufficient for this.
Even when it comes to stuff that seems reaaaaally close to pure derivative: Googling "How long does it take to boil water?" => "If you're boiling water on the stovetop, in a standard sized saucepan, then it takes around 10 minutes for the correct temp of boiling water to be reached. In a kettle, the boiling point is reached in half this time."
That's a verbatim snippet pulled directly from https://unocasa.com/blogs/tips/how-long-to-boil-water, and yet Google exists and continues to do stuff like this under the fair use doctrine despite massive efforts to attack/monetize their service. [To be fair, Google does link results, which probably insulates them because it's less hurtful to the commercial interests of the source; that said, with open source there generally are no commercial interests to hurt (open source attribution will be a tough sell as an actual commercial interest), and that's specifically called out in the law as a factor]
Copilot is even less explicitly at risk IMO, in that it never even stores the text, nor can it reliably retrieve it. I have no idea what makes anyone think it should be more vulnerable than Google.
From the copyright.gov page on fair use (https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/, worth reading in detail for anyone who cares about this stuff, also has links to a monumental number of cases with shockingly intelligible summaries): "Additionally, “transformative” uses are more likely to be considered fair. Transformative uses are those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the work."
Copilot without any shadow of a doubt does add something new, with a further purpose, and does not substitute for the original use of any codebase on Github (it can't create any of the codebases in full, without manual guidance so extreme that you'd have to be using the actual original codebase as a reference, so it clearly cannot substitute for a single one of them, and that's what a lawyer will argue, likely successfully).
In the Google vs. Oracle case (see https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/summaries/google-llc-orac...), a big piece of the fair use finding was that "its value in significant part derives from the value that those who do not hold copyrights, namely, computer programmers, invest of their own time and effort to learn." and "further[s] the development of computer programs”. It's hard to see where Copilot wouldn't fall into that category, as well, and that's precedent on (multiple) appeal.
By my reading this should be a slam-dunk fair use ruling, unless precedent gets really upended, and Butterick is wasting a ton of time and effort for absolutely zero potential gain other than some bragging rights, but to each his own...I guess we all have to grind our axes from time to time.
That doesn’t matter, IMHO. Once Copilot manages to copy a work, a copy has been created and copyright has been violated. If this occurence is reasonably likely, then Copilot is wittingly assisting in violating copyright.
I do completely understand that a lot of people disagree with me morally, and think that extracting insights from scraping the public web should be illegal. You're free to have that opinion, but I'd recommend you start lobbying your congressman to change the law, because though I'm not a lawyer I hang out with a few who do copyright stuff, and I don't think the law as it stands is on your side. That said, who can say, maybe this will end up bubbling up through many layers of appeals and end up at the Supreme Court someday, this stuff is all certainly wildly outside the bounds of what anyone writing the copyright laws was thinking about back in the 70s (which I think was the latest significant iteration?) so it's fair to say it's a complete gray area.
And yet, someone has done so, and found that to be the case. Therefore, it falls under "normal use".
So make up your mind. Is software engineering only about assembling working programs, or assembling working programs + navigating license minutiae?
One of these, Copilot has a place in. The other it does not.
"I can use a gun to shoot someone" doesn't make guns illegal, even if people do so with some regularity. "I shot someone to make the point that guns can kill people" is worth even less in the eye of the law, and that is literally what you're pointing to here.
With open source code, the harm is much less tangible, since negligibly few open source projects make money from people going to their GitHub pages because they're searching for code snippets (not zero, but almost). My guess is that an honest quantification would put the lost revenue due to Copilot's existence in the tens to maaaaaybe hundreds of dollars. Courts look at that type of thing, which is why I don't think this will end up being an issue, at least in the US. Europe is wild, who knows what they'll do there, and that's where activists on this topic should most wisely apply pressure, you can always convince someone in government there to throw a spear at a BigCo. You won't take them down, but you may get them to negotiate, and I don't even necessarily think that's a bad thing.
That said, even in the US, if enough people make noise then things could change, so I encourage you to speak to your congressperson (I will be as well, but arguing the other side, because I really do think this is fair use and I'd like to see it enshrined as such explicitly, because this fight is going to be extremely common over the next few decades).
Let's just copy each other's code without attribution.
Some algorithms in scientific computing require lots of effort to implement as nice, reusable, performant function. Those functions often more important than whatever the whole is doing because it's what most other people will be interested in using.
Really? I challenge you to write a correct email validation regex.
If it’s all just disposable code, WHY ISNT MICROSOFT TRAINING COPILOT ON WINDOWS AND OFFICE CODE?
Creative commons maybe.
Just because you, as someone who self proclaimed to have done more OSS than 95% of the commenters here, does not know how to use OSS licenses, doesn't mean that the copyright question being discussed here is a non issue.
The issue is that you don't care about what the licenses in your code mean:
> I publish my code under MIT when possible (...) please train on my work or split out my functions verbatim (...) I don’t even care about the attribution part of MIT
Having been a member of a very high profile permissively licensed project and having started a few relatively popular ones of my own, I’d say I don’t need to take licensing advice or be called “does not know how to use OSS licenses” from someone who laughably advises using Creative Commons, when Creative Commons itself advises against using CC licenses for source code, except CC0, which is entirely different from CC.
I was considering not replying, but here goes nothing....
> not because I will personally pursue every clause in it.
Then you are out of the game, because all clauses should be respected, or else you are committing something very close to an illegality when you violate said clauses. If you don't want a specific clause, consult a lawyer and remove it, or use another license.
> Creative Commons itself advises against using CC licenses for source code
So before your didn't care about respecting clauses and now you do?
I could argue: there are some bits of text in CC that make it not a good license for code, but I don't care because I don't respect those clauses. I'm not going to make that argument, because it doesn't make any sense. You either use a license and respect it or you don't.
I mostly contribute by finding issues and reporting them, does that make me less of a OSS contributor than you?
And yet I do care if my private project is used by behemoth like Microsoft without my consent, even if it's only poorly written fizzbuzz. Why? because if I wanted to share it I would publish.
Feel free to care.