[notkaiho]

Unless you were using structures directly from said code, probably not?

Compare if you had only learned writing from, say, the Bible. You would probably write in a very Biblical manner, but would you write the Psalms exactly? Most likely not.

[edenhyacinth]

We have seen Co-Pilot directly output (https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitatio...) the zen of python when prompted - there's no reason it wouldn't write the Psalms exactly when prompted in the right manner.

[disgruntledphd2]

That's super cool. As long as you do the things you specify at the bottom of that doc (provide attribution if copied so people can know if it's OK to use) then a lot of the concerns of people on these threads are going to be resolved.

[edenhyacinth]

Pretty much! There's only three major fears remaining

* Co-pilot fails to detect it, and you have a potential lawsuit/ethical concern when someone finds out. Although the devil on my shoulder says that if Co-pilot didn't detect it, what's to say another tool will?

* Co-pilot reuses code in a way that still violates copyright, but is difficult to detect. I.e. If you checked via a syntax tree, you'd notice that the code was the same, but if you looked at it as raw text, you wouldn't.

* Purely ethical - is it right to take licensed code and condense it into a product, without having to take into account the wishes of the original creators? It might be treated as normal that other coders will read it, and pick up on it, but when these licenses were written no one saw products like this coming about. They never assumed that a single person could read all their code, memorise it, and quote it near-verbatim on command.

[disgruntledphd2]

> Purely ethical - is it right to take licensed code and condense it into a product, without having to take into account the wishes of the original creators? It might be treated as normal that other coders will read it, and pick up on it, but when these licenses were written no one saw products like this coming about. They never assumed that a single person could read all their code, memorise it, and quote it near-verbatim on command.

It's gonna be really interesting to see how this plays out.

[corobo]

I've not seen Copilot in action yet, I was under the impression it doesn't use code directly.

In any case my original question was answered by the tweeter in a later tweet I missed https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1410049195067674625

I get where they're coming from but they are kinda just handwaving it back the other way with the "u fell for marketing idiot" vibe. I wish someone smarter than me could simplify the legal ramifications around this but we'll probably have to wait till it kills someone (or at least costs someone a bunch of money) to get any actual laws set up.