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by bluesign 706 days ago
yeah the problem here is there is no 'code A' usually, it is more like: 1000s of GPLed code (A1, A2, ... An )

Technically when you get a piece from each, there is no infringement legally. ( as they have all different copyright holders )

2 comments

From my understanding of a blog post by GitHub last year, they are planning to launch a tool to find similar code to what emitted by CoPilot, implying that CoPilot does not mix multiple sources for a single function, but derives a code block it found with a similar functionality (or maybe bigger blocks with similar functionality, IDK).

If CoPilot indeed derives a function (or a functional block) from a single source, it might plainly violate the license of the repository where it derives the code from.

There are many questions, and nothing is clear cut. The only thing I know is, I will never use that thing.

EDIT: I remembered that people were able to make CoPilot emit their code almost as-is with the correct prompts: https://x.com/docsparse/status/1581461734665367554

So it's not we're taking a bit from n different sources, and generate something with that.

> Technically when you get a piece from each, there is no infringement legally.

False in ex-Commonwealth countries and Japan.