Innovation in code should be heralded but if in the majority of cases the coder using Copilot and similar tools is just saving time on bog standard functions they could write themselves, it's difficult to understand why that needs to be attributed.
I don't know if you watch YouTube, but this is probably how every creator hit with a bullshit DMCA claim for 5s of audio from a song feels. Why does OpenAI's work demand special consideration here? Or to put it another way - if we're going to be ignoring copyright, everyone should be able to do it.
Yes, yesss. You're getting to the logical conclusion. Now I don't think Microsoft have become 'based' and want to break the copyright system but I hope they have inadvertently done so through their actions.
The fact of the matter is that some companies have made a paid service by violating the copyright of individuals. That's fundamentally not okay.
But instead of either of these views that focus on selfishness, it's much more productive to instead think about what benefits society as a whole.
It's so bizarre to see these prima facie bad arguments being used by someone who isn't being paid by Microsoft to make them. If Microsoft puts all of their code in, requires anyone who uses copilot to share their code with the algorithm, and allows anyone to run the model on their own platform complete with updates, you'll see all of the FOSS objections dry up in an instant.
The fact is as a society we have decided to reward creators with copyright as a means to commercialise their creation and get compensation. Who is to say programmers are not creators and the compensation they want for open source licenses is attribution?
Microsoft really should have known better than to touch OpenAI without a 10 feet barge pole.
Most coding is not innovative, and that is the kind of code that these tools are producing and derived from in most cases.
So your requirements are pseudo-code which you simply have ti translate. I see. No creativity required. Jepp.
> Most coding is not innovative, and that is the kind of code that these tools are producing and derived from in most cases.
I see what you want to suggest. Then it woulnb't be required to learn on these datasets and simply build a "fair use" product which covers these cases with a snippet engine.
Don't be naive.
If programming is nothing but translating unoriginal old algorithms, then you should train copilot on those. Nobody would complain. The fact that they don't is an unassailable proof of the unsurprising fact that programmers add value to programs.
Literally no one objects to people like you donating your code to Microsoft.
Given how insane copyright laws are I would be pleased if they for once worked in my favour.
After reading the comments here, apparently everyone is a genius with code so special and unique, it would be unfathomable for two or more people to arrive at the same exact outcome.
Why can't they train on code that they own, such as the windows source code?
Why doesn't copyright law apply to open source code but applies strongly to windows source code?
Mind-bogglingly entitled.
I'm in the first category; I'm guessing by your abusive response you are in the second?
First one: Uses of attribution and copyleft licenses are just ego-boosting, instead of legitimate protection of authorship against corporate piracy.
Second: Criticism of said corporate exploitation of community work is the actual entitled behaviour. Oh, it's also abusive.
Third strawmen: that people who oppose CoPilot in its current form just want to defend copyright around boilerplate stack-overflowish type code.
All false.
I can only assume... You're either too young and inexperienced to remember the early days of the copyleft, free software, and open source movements and why these licenses exist (and still need to exist)... or your values are so backwards that you just think it's Ok to harvest other people's hard work for your own (or your employer's) own profit.
To be clear: There is no heuristic at work in something like CoPilot that can distinguish between boilerplate code and genuine innovation. It has been shown multiple times to just freely copy and paste novel, copyrighted code; without attribution or conforming to license restrictions. That is unacceptable and deserving of legal countermeasures.
I would have no problem with CoPilot copying only the code of people who have opened their code for that kind of use. But that's not what it does.
Notable that Microsoft, its owner, is not training CoPilot on its own massive corpus of code. Just other people's code.
No. You are being abusive when you throw out insults to a commenter who argues something you disagree with - please don't try and obfuscate what you were doing, and check the HN guidelines before commenting further, as you are repeating the hostile and condescending tone and should know better.
However, as I started the thread with a comment that I guess was more provocative (and perhaps more personally felt by others here) than I intended, I'll accept your criticism and bow out.