Were licenses violated (intentionally or otherwise) in the released Copilot model? I have seen lots of comments in which people would answer "yes" to this question. What is the official stance? Does Github do anything to mitigate license abuse? How is Github giving attribution where due?
Currently this feels as though after many years Microsoft / Github stabbed its users in the back by violating our licenses.
If open source licenses were violated only for Github to sell our laundered code back to us for $100 a year, what is the point in contributing to open source software? This feels like a massive scam.
Many years ago I became concerned that the various websites that constantly ask for free code contributions and solutions (hackerrank, stackoverflow etc) might be building AI based on that code. of course my coworkers laughed (coincidentally one went on to work at github, i wonder if he remembers our conversation) and here we are.
Edit:
additionally all this
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31895763
Edit 2:
What if I make a GPT-3 model trained only on famous sci-fi and fantasy authors and then get it to pump out some semi-ok fiction and then charge other people for it for $10 a month? Is that legal?
* Copilot isn't nearly as useful as some are making it out to be - I've been seeing thread on Reddit talking about how Copilot will mean devs will now be out of a job, and a bunch of other hot takes about what this means for the industry. I personally think that it won't be all that revolutionary, very useful, but it's not going to disrupt anything.
* The "Software vs Snippets" argument: Say you have an OSS project that is MIT licensed. Copilot learns from some of your code and offers suggestions based on what you wrote to another developer for say a helper function or a script. Technically yes, your License was violated and your code was stolen. But when you think about it on a more practical level it's not that big of a deal. The point I'm making is Software is all about composing a bunch of snippets into something of value. A dev ripping off my build script or key extractor helper function isn't the same as them ripping off my entire app. One is just fine, the other is not in my eyes.