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by mariusor 1794 days ago
However you did give them permission to use your code by the fact that you acceded to their terms and conditions[1] when you created an account. IANAL, I don't know if this section would hold to scrutiny in a court of law, but I'm pretty sure this is what their legal team considers to cover them when it comes to training Copilot on code hosted with them.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-o...
2 comments
steerablesafe 1794 days ago
People routinely share code on Github that is not owned or at least not fully owned by them, so they can't really rely only on the ToS.
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mariusor 1794 days ago
See one paragraph above what I initially linked. They cover that also.
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steerablesafe 1794 days ago
IANAL, but that is not my reading. They cover "Your Content" with the license grant, but not "any Content". The user still has the right to post "any Content" if they have the appropriate license to do so, but obviously they can't grant additional licenses to content the user doesn't own.

In my understanding your reading is that users uploading code that they don't own the copyright to, but otherwise have the right to copy through a license, are in violation with the ToS in general.

My reading is that the license grant only applies to "Your Content" as defined in the ToS, and otherwise users are free to upload code with permissive license and it _does not grant_ additional licenses to Github.

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b3morales 1793 days ago
The TOS is not a blanket grant for them to do anything they like with the material. As I said elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27823862

> Certainly the GitHub TOS grants them some common-sense ability to copy the code you upload so that they can usefully host it. Can you point to the portion that allows them to use it for Copilot?

> Because I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Section D4:

> > This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service...

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junar 1793 days ago
> You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time

> The “Service” refers to the applications, software, products, and services provided by GitHub, including any Beta Previews.

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