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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
... Yet.
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.
But almost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_...
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.
>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.
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.
The internet would explode i think.. lol.