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It’s always bothered me when people end their argument with something along the lines of “disagreeing with me makes you bad.” It immediately shuts down opposing thought without even giving someone a chance.

If you're referring to my last sentence, "Arguing otherwise is being disingenuous", two things:

1) People are disingenuous all the time, intentionally and otherwise. Doesn't necessarily mean that they are "bad". The reality is that people must frequently act cynically for the purposes of self-preservation.

2) With this sentence, I am only referring to the question of whether or not the code from co-pilot posted by Tim Davis "is" the original code. In my view, the transformations present in the code are on the level of what clang-format is capable of. I would argue that if you run code through clang-format, it is functionally "the same" as the original. I believe that this is probably obvious to nearly all experienced programmers, hence my point that I think that if someone is arguing to the contrary, they are being disingenuous. For people with skin in the game (like Graveley, quoted in the article), I would argue that they are being disingenuous in order to cover their asses. For people here on HN, I would argue that they are doing so out of naivety.

Obviously, you're free to disagree with any of this, and anything in my original post. If you feel like I am accusing you of being "bad", that is not my intention.

If someone says sexual relations with a 5 year old is bad and if you disagree you're bad, does that also bother you?

I think you know the answer to that.

Perhaps I meant a normal debate and not something horrific and obvious.

>release their software open source instead of licensing

What do you mean? Open source is not just source available.

Open Source Science Software is generally licensed under MIT or GPL to make the source available, source code inheritable, mark the artifact as a deliverable, and make code reviewable and encourage collaboration.

So the funding bodies can support you financially over the code you released, and other users can support you with improvements to make code more valuable and usable.

This is beyond source available, this how Free Software is designed and dreamed to work in practice.

Yes but GGP said “instead of licensing”.

I read it as "licensing in a proprietary way", or "licensing with strict copyright terms".

Which is also present in some research software. You buy the source, but can't share/distribute. Only compile, customize and use.

This is the correct interpretation. Apologies for any confusion.

I mean this in the best way, but your comment doesn't make any sense. I'm asking sfpotter what he means by releasing something OS without using licensing. I didn't ask for an overview of free software.

Licensing in this context means "closed/strict licensing which doesn't provide freedoms". The code is actually licensed:

https://github.com/DrTimothyAldenDavis/SuiteSparse/blob/mast...

> Licensing in this context means "closed/strict licensing which doesn't provide freedoms".

Maybe that's what the commenter meant but that's not what that language means. Open source licenses are, well, licenses, and if you use them then you're licensing your code. The L in GPL stands for license, for example.

The original commenting user verified that he/she used the term "License" as in "Strict copyright" [0].

There's no need to be pedantic over a word here.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33274282

"Strict copyright" doesn't make sense either. OSS licenses are just as strict as closed source ones. You can just say a "closed source license."

OSS licenses are generally called "permissive", "weak copyright", "weak copyleft" and "strong copyleft" (in case of GPL family) depending on the context and nature of the license implied.

"Strict/Strong Copyright" makes sense.

Just try Googling for "weak copyright" or "strong copyright". You can see for yourself that there's no such usage like you're explaining. All the top results are about whether copyright as a general concept is, or should be, strong or weak, applied to all circumstances (proprietary and open sourced software alike and even other types of copyrightable works).

Strong and weak copyleft is a different matter, those terms do make sense. Maybe that's the source of confusion here.

I suppose I was being pendatic (sorry) but more over your comment than theirs. If that's what they meant then your original reply could've just been "oh I think they meant not a proprietary license" rather than explaining what open source means to someone that already understands it.

In fact, I tried to explain why Open Source works in "Scientific Software" in general. Sorry if that wasn't obvious.

People generally ask "why" people give away their life research for free, and I wanted to clarify that as a person who works in an HPC Center and makes research himself.

https://github.com/DrTimothyAldenDavis/SuiteSparse/blob/mast... it's lgpl or gpl, which is the point of the complaint.

GitHub does a ton of work to formalize license management, it's odd that copilot ignored all of that.

"licensing" as verb is often used to mean "sell or buy (depending on context) commercial licenses". Even though releasing for free as open source also involves a software license.

highways r also funded by tax dollars. so Microsoft can't use the highways either?

This kind of comment is going to poorly age

His code is already used in thousands of repos without proper attribution. Isn't that worse? If you want to steal his code you can just copypaste it. No need for a convoluted prompt baiting Copilot into reproducing it.

Yup, and I bet a lot of those repos are on GitHub. Which is owned by Microsoft. And which were then fed into Copilot.

It’s almost like Microsoft is capable of not only trawling through huge amounts of code, but accurately identifying Tim Davis’s code. Would be pretty crazy if they used these tools to identify instances of copyright/left infringement and help its users and the open source and scientific communities instead of making it clear that they do not want to do those things.

can you imagine the absolute shitstorm/nightmare if MS automated the equivalent of DMCA takedowns across public github repos?

The internet would explode i think.. lol.

> His code is already used in thousands of repos without proper attribution. Isn't that worse?

True. And those are license violations as well. But we aren't discussing those.

We are discussing an online service created by a large corporation that automatically hands millions of developers code directly in their IDE's which was entirely stripped from its license. There's no informing of consent or terms of use whatsoever.

> If you want to steal his code you can just copypaste it

When you copy the code from his GitHub repo, a reference to the applicable license is directly mentioned in the files you're copying from.

"stealing" in that regard would mean: willfully ignoring the license and its terms. You can't deny you weren't informed about the existence of the license. It's an integral part of the code.

As opposed to o-pilot which presents you code, giving you the impression that you can just plug it into your own projects, without informing you about any applicable terms of use e.g. attribution.

Put differently, if you're a professional and you copy/paste entire files from some random GitHub repo that doesn't contain any licensing or copyright information, well, you're creating a legal liability for yourself, your employer and anyone using that code through your work.

> No need for a convoluted prompt baiting Copilot into reproducing it.

In an utopian world, everyone would just be able to freely use whatever code is available on the Internet without having to ask for anyone's consent. We don't live in such a world. The reality is one where intellectual property rights and court cases are a thing.

How can it properly attribute it? The code is being "copied" by copliot from other repos that didn't properly attribute it. This is no different than if you found one of those repos and copied it yourself. Copilot is magnifying a problem that was already there. It, or any human doing the same, is not doing anything morally wrong. There's no way for it or any human to know that code is copyrighted. Unfortunately intent is not a requirement for copyright infringement, which is just bat shit insane. [1]

This is really much ado about nothing. Nobody baits copliot into reproducing existing chunks of code, and it's very rare to use a big chunk of code from copilot without changes. I've been using it for months and I can't recall a single instance of doing that. Little bits of code should not be copyrightable in the first place. I can't copyright a single sentence fragment. All this fuss is way overblown.

[1] https://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2013/12/innocen...

> How can it properly attribute it?

There it is. If you have to ask that question, it follows that co-pilot isn't the right tool for developers to use in the first place.

Would you - or your employer - want to risk a lawsuit because you inadvertently copied code that's actually released under a license with particular terms of use?

"Oh, my due diligence went as far as trusting Microsoft and their product for making sure any and all rights where cleared before their tool provided me code." is a meager excuse in a court case when the original author of said code decides to sue you.

> Little bits of code should not be copyrightable in the first place. I can't copyright a single sentence fragment.

True. You can't copyright single fact statements. But clearly, there are cases where co-pilot suggests way more then that.

It's also true that most people don't really consider how stringent copyright laws really are until they are affected by the consequences of their actions (fines, suits, cease & desist,...).

> it's very rare to use a big chunk of code from copilot without changes

That's a tentative claim.

> Would you - or your employer - want to risk a lawsuit because you inadvertently copied code that's actually released under a license with particular terms of use?

Copilot doesn't do this unless you bait it with very obvious prompts. But to answer your question: yes, never worked at a company that actually cares about licenses. It's a mirage. No-one ever gets sued. If your code is out there it will be used and abused and everyone gets away with it.

> No-one ever gets sued.

... Yet.

> Would you - or your employer - want to risk a lawsuit because you inadvertently copied code that's actually released under a license with particular terms of use?

Yes. In actuality none of the code I've seen out of copilot is likely to be an issue. This is a mostly theoretical problem that is even less likely to be litigated. If you can't use copliot at work because of this, your lawyers have too much say inside the company, or management is too risk averse.

Also fuck copyright law. It's messed up. I'm not saying get rid of copyrights, but it needs a serious overhaul that is not getting.

> I can't copyright a single sentence fragment.

But almost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_...

Training with repos that weren't properly vetted is a choice. It doesn't mean you aren't responsible when that leads to license issues.

> Copilot is magnifying a problem that was already there.

Copilot is a large-scale public distribution service which pumps out copyright violations which directly degrade incentives of competent software authors which are known to have brought about the code that Copilot wants to pump out.

It is magnifying the problem of the volume in play of a structural solvent that is dissolving the means to produce quality original software.

> It, or any human doing the same, is not doing anything morally wrong.

A person has placed an object into society, asking for certain treatment of it, upon which they base their livelihood. Knowingly disrespecting and ignoring the requests placed with it – which are in part embedded in a formal social structure of international law and the accompanying expectations of behavior – BY USING A GIGANTIC MACHINE TO DO SO… to support your livelihood… is not a moral failure? Can you confirm?

It’s the same if you don’t use the giant machine for it.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t see it or choose not to accept it as such. The original author may still stop working, and there is a completely unnecessary moral failure there.

Authors of open source software choose to put their code out into the world. The legal agreement is if you use it, you attribute the use and abide by the rules of the license. In practice this is not often done, and there is little consequence except in truly egregious cases. I don't know any open source contributors who stop working based on this or have their livelihoods affected. I personally, do not care. If I didn't want people to use the code, I wouldn't have published it at all. If copliot were to reproduce code from a public repo of mine, I don't care. The genie is not going back in the bottle, so this whole discussion is moot.

Just a nitpick:

>True. And those are license violations as well. But we aren't discussing those.

It feels like we are now talking about it since they choose to bring it up.

Yeah, it's a fallacy called "changing the goalposts". It's bringing up an argument that, although true in and of itself, is not relevant to the subject of the ongoing debate.