Innovation dies when creators can't create without someone ripping off their work against the terms they release it under.
I am more hesitant to release code on GitHub under any licenses now. Even outside of GPL-esque terms, I've considered open sourcing some of my product's components under a source available but otherwise proprietary license, but if Microsoft won't adhere to popular licenses like the GPL, why would they adhere my own licensing terms?
If my licenses mean nothing, why would I release my work in a form that will be ripped off by a trillion dollar company without any attribution, compensation or even a license to do so? The incentives to create and share are diminished by companies that won't respect the terms you've released your creations under.
That's just me as an individual. Thinking in terms of for-profit companies, many of them would choose not to share their source code if they know their competitors can ignore their licenses, slurp it up and regurgitate it at an incomprehensible scale.
> Innovation dies when creators can't create without someone ripping off their work against the terms they release it under.
I strongly disagree. There would be more innovation if code couldn't be copyrighted or kept secret. See: all of open source.
> I've considered open sourcing some of my product's components under a source available but otherwise proprietary license
What's the point of that? This isn't useful to anyone. The fact you even consider it shows you don't understand open source. I'm sure you happily use open source code yourself though.
> There would be more innovation if code couldn't be copyrighted or kept secret. See: all of open source.
I actually agree. However this is not what's happening. Copilot effectvely removes copyright from FLOSS code, but doesn't touch proprietary software. FLOSS loses it's teeth against the corporations.
I'm the author of about a dozen popular AGPL and GPL projects, but please tell me how I don't understand open source.
The purpose of releasing source available but proprietary code is so that users can learn and integrate into it, and making it available lets anyone learn how it works. The only reason I even considered making the source available is balance between 1) needing to eat and 2) valuing open source enough to risk #1.
I played around with creating an MIT license on my GitHub that explicitly forbids Copilot and other such systems that I thought I may update my projects to, because I strongly dislike the data collection. I'm not a lawyer though.
Is there a GutHub terms of agreement that covers Copilot?
They claim it is fair use, therefore they can bypass copyright (and therefore license terms).
It being in GitHub has not been brought up as a factor yet (by GitHub/Microsoft), AFAIK they could use code from other places with that logic, they just don't need to.
I find your comment a bit perplexing, perhaps you can help me understand.
Why do you want to release code on GitHub with an oppressive license? What's the motivation for you, and what's the benefit for anyone else in it being released?
The size of code fragments being generated with these AI tools is, as far as I can tell, extremely small. Do you think you could even notice if your own implementation of sqrt, comments and all, wound up in Excel?
The point of copyleft licenses (which I assume are what you mean with "opressive") is to subvert copyright in order to incentivize others to share their code by providing them with something to build on if they return the favor. You cannot possibly call these licenses opressive since the default state with copyright is that you are not allowed to do much at all (at least when it comes to copying). In fact copyleft licenses allow you to do much much more than your average corp-lawyer approved proprietary license.
The problem (or A problem) with copilot is that it tries to sidestep those licenses, purpotedly allowing you to build upon the work of others without giving anything back even if the work you are building on has been published on the explicit condition that what you create with it should also be shared in the same way. While the great AI tumbler makes the legal copyright infringement argument complicated by giving you lots of small bits from lots of different sources it really does not change the moral situation: you are explicitly going against the wishes of the people that are enabling you to do what you are doing.
Beyond copyleft, this kind of disregard for other peoples wishes also applies to attribution even with more liberal licenses. Programming is already a field where proper attrubution is woefully lacking - we don't need to make it worse by introducing processes where it becomes much harder if not impossible to tell who contributed to the creation.
Now I am all for maximum code sharing. I'm all for abolishing copyright entirely and letting everyone build what they want without being shackled by so-called intellectual property. But that is not something Microsoft is doing with Copilot. What they have created is a one way funnel from OSS to proprietary software. If Microsoft had initially trained Copilot on their own proprietary sources this would have been seen very differently. But they did not. Because the way Microsoft "loves open source" is not in the way of a mutally beneficial symbiotic relationship but that of an abuser that loves taking advantage of whatever they can with giving as little back as they can get away with.
How does one make the leap from "a source available but otherwise proprietary license" to a copyleft license? As I understand the terms, perhaps in too limited a way, a proprietary license is never one in which others are free to build on the code or incorporate any part of it into their own works, and a source available proprietary license is just publishing source that no-one can use.
As for whether Copilot's morally wrong or not - I don't think copyright as a concept makes any sense at the level of the trivial, where Copilot _should_ be acting. If Copilot regularly reproduces sizeable portions of code from a single origin _without_ careful and deliberate guidance, I'd agree that there's a problem here. As I understand it though, that's not happening.
By its very nature of being published, code from OSS is funnelled into proprietary codebases by humans performing a similar task to Copilot - reading available code and using that to evolve an understanding of how to produce software. I like to think we do it at a deeper level than Copilot, but the general effect is the same: the code I write, like the words I write, are heavily influenced by all the code I've read over the years.
If I wind up using a few words from your comment, down the line, because some turn of phrase you used struck me as a good way to say something, do you think I've morally wronged you?
I am more hesitant to release code on GitHub under any licenses now. Even outside of GPL-esque terms, I've considered open sourcing some of my product's components under a source available but otherwise proprietary license, but if Microsoft won't adhere to popular licenses like the GPL, why would they adhere my own licensing terms?
If my licenses mean nothing, why would I release my work in a form that will be ripped off by a trillion dollar company without any attribution, compensation or even a license to do so? The incentives to create and share are diminished by companies that won't respect the terms you've released your creations under.
That's just me as an individual. Thinking in terms of for-profit companies, many of them would choose not to share their source code if they know their competitors can ignore their licenses, slurp it up and regurgitate it at an incomprehensible scale.