Tell HN: GitHub Copilot can now block suggestions matching public code
There was many personally identifying information leaks when it initially launched. Which suggests that they snooped through OSS code and violated any licenses. Here are 2 answers to the main two things copilot sympathizers ask.<p>1. How do you know Co-pilot violated OSS licenses?<p>&gt; The aforementioned PII and secrets emitted. And IIRC a support personnel said they even copied GPL licensed code. So there is nothing stopping them from copying MIT licensed ones. Which is still a violation without attribution. So no reason for the benefit of the doubt.<p>2. Humans copy code all the time. So why can&#x27;t an AI? Or something along the lines of it...<p>The answer is 2 parted.<p>1. A human can only copy so much. Most of them are not in bad faith. And those who are in bad faith are not a humongous portion. An AI just scrapes the code in mass scale which is impossible for a human even with automation. It&#x27;s also easier for it to learn from this training data compared to someone scrapping the data and maintaining a DB. This is such a common sense thing. None of the laws, policies or systems are made for AI in mind. So it is just a careless thing to say.<p>2. If are not adhering to OSS licenses then YOU ARE in violation. So if you are not called out or punished, DOESN&#x27;T MEAN you are right. Just means you are getting away with it.<p>This is just a PR exercise for MS. They already have the data and the product. A nobody has the balls to question them. The normalization of these bad behaviors with their good PR being &quot;the guardians of the OSS&quot; is literally taunting the entire OSS community.<p>This is where I hoped FSF, EFF, SFConservancy or any other group would step up. Nothing so far. Just yelling into the void hoping MS will suddenly do the right thing.