Free Software Foundation Announces Five Papers Exploring Microsoft's 'GitHub Copilot' (fsf.org) 39
GitHub's Copilot is an AI-powered autocompletion tool for coders, but the FSF has come up with a new way to describe it:
Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS).
But they also feel the service "immediately raised serious questions for the free software movement and our ability to safeguard user and developer freedom" — which is why last July they'd put out a call for papers from the free software community. And they're now announcing the results: [W]e concluded there were five papers that would be best suited to inform the community and foster critical conversations to help guide our actions in the search for solutions.... The papers contain opinions with which the Free Software Foundation (FSF) may or may not agree, and any views expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent the FSF. They were selected because we thought they advanced discussion of important questions, and did so clearly....
The five papers are:
Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS).
But they also feel the service "immediately raised serious questions for the free software movement and our ability to safeguard user and developer freedom" — which is why last July they'd put out a call for papers from the free software community. And they're now announcing the results: [W]e concluded there were five papers that would be best suited to inform the community and foster critical conversations to help guide our actions in the search for solutions.... The papers contain opinions with which the Free Software Foundation (FSF) may or may not agree, and any views expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent the FSF. They were selected because we thought they advanced discussion of important questions, and did so clearly....
The five papers are:
The FSF adds:
"If this subject is of interest to you, we recommend you read this selection of papers and share your thoughts and feedback. Several of the authors have agreed to participate in follow-up discussions which will be held via IRC, LibrePlanet Wiki, and LibrePlanet Discuss mailing list.... Whether or not you are able to attend any of the live events, we encourage you to contribute to the discussion on the wiki and mailing list. As stakeholders in free software, the preservation of user freedom and copyleft, we would like to engage the community in any possible actions that must be taken."
Free software movement... (Score:3)
... is dead in the water. As long as copyright law has software licensed and not owned, Intel, AMD and the game/content industries will lock down our PC. They've been at work for 20 years developing chips and tech to lock us out of our own devices. That shit can only happen because of the lopsided copyright laws lobbied into being by corporate america. America is too politically backward a nation and stupid to be able to reform those out of control copyright laws since it is a totally corporately controlled society, with a deeply politically ignorant population among both working class and professionals.
I talked to someone who wrote for the ACM about the last 23+ years of PC game theft and he seemed "befuddled" as if he was unaware it was happening, aka "surveillance capitalism" is "lawless capitalism" where it is legal to sell people broken applications and pc games and hack their computers via "drm" which is just code for theft for the copyright corporate kleptocracy that has taken over america's government.
Either way general computing is on the way out, windows 10 - the first client server OS with forced updates for bios and hidden chips, are going the way of consoles and mobile phones and 90+% of the public is clueless and unaware, and has been since the rise of "MMO's" (aka RPG's with stolen networking code) from 1997 onward beginning with ultima online in 1997 and everquest in 1999.
There's been a war on software ownership as soon as network connections based 33.6K modems for christ sakes.
For those in doubt go have a read here, this paper, and prepare to puke your guys up, because these guys in the universities who work for WIPO have planned the end of the general computer that obeys us since the mid 90's. They literally say "we don't like people having to raw honest byte code" (aka honest hex values of any file when you open it with a hex editor). How is that not totally an attack on general computing gentleman?
https://web2.qatar.cmu.edu/cs/... [cmu.edu]
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... is dead in the water.
The free software movement will more likely die if they see their role to be an impediment to progress. I haven't used MS Co-pilot, but I have heard positive things about it. Tools like this providing "intelligent guidance" are the future of coding. We should be looking for ways to embrace progress rather than getting pushed aside.
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You see intelligent guidance, my legal department sees unknown copyright violation risk.
Your legal department will always see risks, that is their job. If you let them run things, you will never do anything. Lawyers will always pick the worst-case scenario, at least good ones will. You need to ask how great the risk is and what are the possible downsides and then decide if the risk is 1. too great, 2. requires resolution (i.e., contacting Microsoft to get a legal opinion from them that you are safe) or 3. tolerable. That is not the lawyer's decision, or it should not be.
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I've been using CoPilot for month or so now and it is fairly handy. Seems to pick up my own debugging and support functions and suggest them to be used in the code. Creates boilerplate code fairly accurately.
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the reality is that any development process also describes who is an actual developer and who is the intended consumer of said development. those goals and many others do not have to be predefined outside that discussion of the development process. so in the first person software is the developers and the intent of the software.
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Because Linux is so popular with servers, many hardware vendors support it. Because it's easier to work with the Linux kernel developers if you are open source, many of them have open sourced their drivers.
In fact Linux hardware compatibility has probably never been better, and it gives the user a level of control that Windows does not offer.
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I'm having a great deal of trouble parsing your message.
... is dead in the water. As long as copyright law has software licensed and not owned, Intel, AMD and the game/content industries will lock down our PC. They've been at work for 20 years developing chips and tech to lock us out of our own devices. That shit can only happen because of the lopsided copyright laws lobbied into being by corporate america. America is too politically backward a nation and stupid to be able to reform those out of control copyright laws since it is a totally corporately controlled society, with a deeply politically ignorant population among both working class and professionals.
I think this is a myopic and dated argument. Yes, at some points in time, Intel and AMD and Microsoft were the greatest threat to software freedom, no questions asks. Today the biggest threats, and it's not even close, are Facebook (Instagram, Meta, Oculus, WhatsApp), Google (Mail, Search, Maps, Home, you name), Amazon (Twitch, Amazon, etc).
You're complaining about your computer having the possibility of locked down while the vast majority of software
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You think MMORPG using stolen network started the downfall of general purpose computing? Are you aware of the history of terminals and networking that go back to the earliest days of modern computers?
You don't get the game plan for the game industry and software industry was to back end every application, aka sell you programs where parts of the programs files are held hostage on a remote machine. You no longer own your computer if software files for the program are split between your machine and a corporations rack of PC's. Every "MMO" was just a PC game in development that had it's networking code reworked, you don't seem to remember the 90's. Multiplayer was a basic feature that came inside EVERY
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Multiplayer was a basic feature that came inside EVERY GAME and that started being ripped out once ultima online hit, "MMO's" were a fake genre invented by the game industry to justify stealing the big budget AAA games because they wanted to prevent piracy, you don't grasp "MMO's/F2P/steam" are all the same thing - client-server back ended C/c++ applications in scientific reality.
Gosh, as someone who grew up playing MUDs, BBS dialup games, and even predecessor MMORPGs like Shadows of Yserbius, that switch was completely natural and completely organic. MUD -> graphical MMO was just completely natural.
No, I don't think "MMOs/F2P/steam" are at all the same thing.
They want to kill local applications and they've been doing a good job. Quake 3's multiplayer networking code still works, many modenr games have had their multiplayer "shut down" that is a statement by the game industry that they won the battle because the public is stupid.
Yes, the days of games coming with IPX and local network TCP/IP capabilities are largely gone. They were great for those of us who were around then AND have the technical savvy to take advantage of it. Most people couldn't,
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that switch was completely natural and completely organic
You're the idiot moron that killed dedicated servers and level editors. So we're never going to see eye to eye, what you thought of as "organic". I saw as you giving away our rights to get local applications for Windows, AAA PC games, and things like office.
You're a moron, whenever you buy a client-server app you just told the entire software industry you'd like vendor lockin and go back to mainframe computing, you are literally the moron that destroyed PC gaming in the 90's that gave birth to valves crap
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You're the idiot moron that killed dedicated servers and level editors. So we're never going to see eye to eye, what you thought of as "organic". I saw as you giving away our rights to get local applications for Windows, AAA PC games, and things like office.
Me, personally? Wow, perhaps ironic since I actually wrote a level editor for Warcraft 2.
Transformers War for cybertron and Fall of cybertron had their multiplayer networking "disabled" because of what was learned by you mud/ultima online/mmo faggots in the mid 90's when you started buying client-server PC AAA games like ultima online, everquest, asherons call and dark age of camelot, that changed the entire directly of PC AAA gaming and accelerated microsoft, intels and amd's agenda to put hardware drm like pluton and tpm inside our PC's.
Can't say I've played a single game you've mentioned, sorry.
You are exactly the idiot moron that enabled all this drm shit. So of course you can't be talked to, you don't grasp the evils of mainframe computing, since you are the mmo/mud moron that caused the decline of AAA PC gaming for the last 23 years because you were too stupid to see, they were going to get rid of modding and level editing in AAA games.
Gosh, the biggest AAA game of the last decade is probably Skyrim. I would go out on a limb and say it's the most modded game in the history of video games. Perhaps not, but it has a huge modding community. My fault, too, I suppose.
Right after dipshits like you started buying RPG's with stolen networking code, AAA PC games had their basic networking code ripped out and were rebranded "MMO". You don't grasp that was the plan to use idiots like you to back end all the big AAA PC releases.
What's the deal with stolen code? That's an interesting minutia to obsess over.
You seem totally unaware that League of legends, dota 2, quake champions, would have been totally local applications we owned and controlled with full modding, level editing dedicated servers, if idiots like you did not spend money on stolen client-server software, because the ENTIRE game is running from our device, that's why every "service" based game is downloaded entirely to our pc and run from our pc.
Never played any of those games, sorry.
It sounds lik
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Can't say I've played a single game you've mentioned, sorry.
So you're not even a real gamer, aka a filthy casual. You could play quake 2 in the 90's and mmo's, but you couldn't see that quake 2 and ultima online are the SAME fucking thing - a C++ program, any client-server app can be converted back to a local application. Since you denied that "MMO's/F2P/DRM" are the same thing, we already know you're irrational/don't grasp how computers work.
The idea you wrote a level editor for warcraft 2 is dubious, because you believe that DRM/MMO's are not the same thing (th
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So you're not even a real gamer, aka a filthy casual. You could play quake 2 in the 90's and mmo's, but you couldn't see that quake 2 and ultima online are the SAME fucking thing - a C++ program, any client-server app can be converted back to a local application. Since you denied that "MMO's/F2P/DRM" are the same thing, we already know you're irrational/don't grasp how computers work. The idea you wrote a level editor for warcraft 2 is dubious, because you believe that DRM/MMO's are not the same thing (they are, since it's just bs marketing terms for a client-server c application).
If by filthy casual you mean someone who no longer plays AAA shooters or MOBAs, sure, I'm a filthy casual and proud. If you choose to spend your dollars supporting the same kind of games and companies you rant about, that's certainly your choice.
Like most people, I played most as a kid, though even then I found things like coding around the game more interesting. A friend of mine was the one who first figured out the rough outline of the War2 PUD files, and another friend cracked some of the rudimentary enc
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MOBAs,
You clearly have no idea what has happened over the last 23+ years of PC gaming, "MOBA's" are just RTS games without the base management /w server back end. AKA pc gaming died once user names and logon accounts appeared on the big AAA budget games because idiots fell for the mmo scam in 1997 which gave the game and software industry all the information they needed to know about the average PC user. That the average PC user and game buyer was a computer illiterate dumbass who couldn't perceive himself out
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AKA they are the same as mmo's like ultima online, everquest, etc. The whole point was to client-server the shit out fo every big budget PC game to monopolize all gaming culture.
That's actually a really interesting point, and I would argue that if that was indeed the point, it has failed completely. Look at two of the most popular games in the last decade (decade+)--Skyrim and Minecraft. No multiplayer, and exactly the model of multiplayer that you support. What about other hit games like Stardew Valley? Factorio? Undertale? I would argue we are in another golden age of gaming, but it's NOT the AAA gaming that you seem to be most into.
Two or more computers networked together become and behave as a single device, so that means the internet is one giant world sized Personal computer to a software corporation, and that means you no longer own your own PC if you take up ANY client server application, nor do you have any privacy or security because by default. Client server apps are security risks by default.
Are we to the singularity yet??
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... is that you?
RMS isn't intelligent enough to realize america is a lawless society, aka it cannot be reformed because christianity + capitalism, the right wing corproate populism that dominates politics that prevents anything like intelligent law making when laws are bribed into being by a sea of corporate money.
Using public good to enrich private enterprise (Score:2)
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i agree but do you agree that, using software to signify all and any, assuming that a demand to make something free or publicly disclose it's source code does not stop anyone from assuming their own goals of self benefit should override any moral discussion ?
What developers should do (Score:2)
Include highly distinctive pieces of code - like complicated-looking lines that do nothing of value, or tricky code that can't be just replicated by random chance - into their code to "watermark" it, then grep for those markers in other software products to root out lazy-ass developers who let the Microsoft tool do their work for them, and gather evidence to sue Microsoft for copyright infringement.
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I'm concerned it will reinforce popular but horrible programming approaches. AI trained with the work of slightly trained amateurs can easily reinforce mediocrity.
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Well yeah, but remember this is a Microsoft tool: even poorly trained AIs can probably produce more stable and more secure code there.
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that is assured. but, what will also happen is the review process by experienced people will increase, then the arms race between open and closed source will continue to solidify. One side arguing for less oversight while the other insists on ultimate oversight. Yes a paradox is inside...
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What about GPL liscensed code on GitHub? (Score:3)
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You cannot copyright the creations of an A.I. This was just recently established. Supreme court and all that.
Since GPL relies on copyright, GPL is dead in the A.I. water.
Re: What about GPL liscensed code on GitHub? (Score:2)
No - rather you cannot copyright a work claiming an 'AI being' as the author. The author has to be a human being - presumably one who instructed the AI to create the work.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/w... [google.com]
The lawsuit was by a programmer - he may have felt he replicated 'evolution', pumping enough energy and programming talent into his computing system to make it turn alive. The courts disagreed.
Wow (Score:2)
Has any one actually read these? Only "Interpreting docstrings without using common sense" contains any real information. "Copyright implications of the use of code repositories to train a machine learning model" was definitely written by either Microsoft or GitHub's lawyers. And I'm pretty certain the last one was written by a CS undergraduate (it gives a rudimentary overview of machine learning concepts and then poses the question "what if teh AI use mah code snippet?")
Deep stuff, FSF. You should be p
Opinion (Score:2)
I read them and I learned a few things.
First, a shiny new $5 word.
Second, OSS is about to have a very deep conversation about fair use. Moving over to film as an analogy, it's pretty obvious that a digital copy of an entire film is not a fair use of the copyrighted material. The difficult bit is how finely you have to slice that film to make it a fair use. Is a single frame of the film acceptable? How abo
Opinion (Score:2)
Second, OSS is about to have a very deep conversation about fair use. Moving over to film as an analogy, it's pretty obvious that a digital copy of an entire film is not a fair use of the copyrighted material. The difficult bit is how finely you have to slice that film to make it a fair use. Is a single frame of the film acceptable? How
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