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by dtrailin 1806 days ago
It's not clear why it would need to be if it runs as a online service. I would say this is analogous to a search engine index. Google for example likely has lots of GPL code in it's index in some transformed form and yet there is little dispute that this is legal.
1 comments
shakna 1806 days ago
> I would say this is analogous to a search engine index. Google for example likely has lots of GPL code in it's index in some transformed form and yet there is little dispute that this is legal.

I'd disagree with the comparison, pretty vehemently. Copilot can generate new code. It isn't just some storage mechanism.

It can create derived code, Google Search can't.

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dtrailin 1806 days ago
Interesting, so your argument is not about parroting but specifically about the novel code Copilot generates. My sense is that it would be fine for all licenses except for AGPL as this is an online service and is not "distributed" per say. That is if you don't buy the argument that machine learning is a transformative work so it doesn't matter what the license is, which is the position of current US caselaw.
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shakna 1806 days ago
No, my argument is that Copilot is specifically _not_ a storage mechanism, but is producing verbatim GPL'd code, meaning that as a piece of software, it is not exempt from the GPL.
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