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Ask HN: Can I charge GitHub for using my code in Copilot?

by ingvul on 7/3/21, 9:59 PM with 32 comments

Since Copilot is regurgitating licensed code without attribution, I pondering many options:

1. sue GitHub (they will probably win since they can afford the best lawyers in the planet)

2. don't use GitHub for future projects. Remove all my current repositories (does this guarantee GitHub can't use my code without attribution? My code is probably still in their Code Vault)

3. use GitHub but use a license that explicitly denies usage of my code by Copilot (GitHub probably would probably just say "you can't do that, please just delete your account")

4. use GitHub but ask them to pay me for using my code without attribution

Option 1 is a waste of money and time for me (I will never win). Option 2 is fine, but I'm not sure what could stop GitHub scrapping public repos hosted in, let's say, GitLab. Option 3 would be the ideal case for me. Option 4: would be nice, but probably won't happen.

  • by bluewalt on 7/3/21, 11:17 PM

    I don't understand all the yelling about this Copilot stuff.

    1) It's not your code that is proposed by copilot, but a mix of thousands and thousands codes, that can not be linked to one specific person. It's like you take 1000 portrait photos and make a new one. How can you prove your photo has been used?

    2) How what's done by Github is causing you any damage, directly or indirectly? If you want to sue someone, you'd better prove any damage to a judge.

    3) Because of all of this yelling, I'm pretty sure Github will add a per-repository option to disable code scraping. But I still don't understand what you'll win.

  • by blhack on 7/3/21, 11:21 PM

    Can you charge me if I read your open source code, and then write my own?

  • by Something1234 on 7/3/21, 10:43 PM

    I'm feeling like we need a new gpl. One that prohibits training machine learning models that regurgitate code directly.

  • by lacker on 7/3/21, 11:14 PM

    No, you cannot charge GitHub for using your code in Copilot. It's the same as you cannot charge all humans that read your code for reading it. You are free to make your code private, and charge people who want to read it. But you can't make your code public and hope to charge money to people who do "fair use" things with it. It doesn't matter how your code is licensed.

  • by despera on 7/4/21, 5:21 AM

    https://twitter.com/pragmaticml/status/1411113232048218119

    So yeah, sorry for those who believe that it's going to return some "purely algorithmic" code and won't just randomly copying code.

    Also, https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309

    Wow, just wow... this has to be regulated FAST.

  • by ingvul on 7/3/21, 10:02 PM

    To make this clear: I am a nobody and my code sucks. Now, for a moment, imagine the same question is stated but by developers who are actually great contributors to the open source community but can't (or don't want to) openly ask these kind of questions regarding Copilot (this is actually why I'm posting this, one of these great contributors is a close friend of mine).

  • by tyingq on 7/3/21, 10:49 PM

    There could be an "Option 5" where you find a way to get Copilot to ingest large amounts of broken, dangerous, etc, code.

  • by yumraj on 7/3/21, 11:06 PM

    > 2. don't use GitHub for future projects.

    Where are you going to go? Self host, sure. Else don’t assume that another code repository won’t do the same thing.

    Also, how do you know that your code was used? I don’t know if GitHub has published a list of the repositories that were used. Or have they?

  • by onionisafruit on 7/3/21, 11:02 PM

    > regurgitating licensed code without attribution

    The article being discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27723710 indicates that they may be adding attribution soon.

  • by thdxr on 7/4/21, 7:27 PM

    If I had to make an argument for Github I'd suggest that Copilot is just an advanced search feature. It can be seen as simplifying the workflow of using Github's search and then copying the results

    Not sure if this simplification crosses some threshold

  • by IfOnlyYouKnew on 7/3/21, 11:12 PM

    It is unlikely for a generic, short segment of source code to fulfil the requirement for copyright that it comprises an actual "work".

  • by CodeWriter23 on 7/4/21, 12:10 AM

    I think since you consented to allowing GitHub to “analyze” your source, the answer is likely “no”. I’m not a lawyer and you might want to check with someone who is.

  • by eplanit on 7/3/21, 11:26 PM

    It's not about Copilot, per se -- but it's clear that most users probably didn't understand when then signed up that they're giving Github (now Microsoft, let's not forget) the right to use their code, at all.

    I've never been comfortable with the idea of trusting IP in places like Github, Google, etc. Although I find Copilot amazing, I find the use of user's code as distasteful as I do understandable.

  • by ykevinator3 on 7/4/21, 1:02 AM

    What is copilot?