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by eulenteufel 1169 days ago
I have no problem with Copilot being trained on AGPL code and the getting released with a AGPL compatible license. Free to do whatever they want with it.

The problem is Copilot training on source code and then discarding any restrictions of the licenses. Maybe it is legal right now but I'm sure this case will find it's way into open source licenses pretty soon.
2 comments
zelphirkalt 1169 days ago
Even if usage is legal right now, the other obligations of the license need to be adhered to as well. Can't just pick or choose one tiny aspect of FSF philosophy and run with that. AGPL is clearly about sharing and spreading free/libre software as well.
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hikawaii 1169 days ago
Do we know if CoPilot X was trained on AGPL, not just GPL?

Additionally I'm not sure if AGPL does anything.

I suspect the ethics and such of licensing when large fractions of work are training AI and using AI need to be worked out rather than getting mad at any individual.

What does copy left look like for AI?

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zelphirkalt 1169 days ago
There is indeed a problem of transparency right now. Companies afaik did not release the complete training data set. Might even be intentionally, because they do not want to risk, that they trained it on stuff they should not have had, without building in license and attribution into the output of their models. Or it might be, that they know that to be a fact.

I can only hope, that lawmakers hurry to catch up with reality and impose transparency obligations for AI models.

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