**Christine Lemmer-Webber** @cwebber@octodon.social · Jun 30, 2021, 02:01

**Christine Lemmer-Webber** @cwebber@octodon.social · Jun 30, 2021, 02:01

Christine Lemmer-Webber @cwebber@octodon.social

Jun 30, 2021, 02:01

Christine Lemmer-Webber @cwebber@octodon.social

The GitHub CoPilot system generates sophisticated enough code that we would consider it copyrightable if a human wrote it.

But the case law around this issue is relatively fresh, afaict. Does Microsoft or GitHub believe they own any copyright on the outputted work?

**shork** @noiob@awoo.space · Jun 30, 2021, 02:12

**shork** @noiob@awoo.space · Jun 30, 2021, 02:12

Jun 30, 2021, 02:12

shork @noiob@awoo.space

@cwebber they trained on a ton of GPL code, by their own admission. I bet a lawyer could argue that it's a derivative work

**nfd** @nfd@cybre.space · Jun 30, 2021, 02:32

**nfd** @nfd@cybre.space · Jun 30, 2021, 02:32

Jun 30, 2021, 02:32

nfd @nfd@cybre.space

@noiob @cwebber strange. Microsoft is typically allergic to Random GPL Code in my experience

**shork** @noiob@awoo.space · 2021-06-30T02:39:47Z

shork @noiob@awoo.space

@nfd @cwebber "Once, GitHub Copilot suggested starting an empty file with something it had even seen more than a whopping 700,000 different times during training -- that was the GNU General Public License." https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitation

Jun 30, 2021, 02:39 · · Tusky · · ·

**nfd** @nfd@cybre.space · Jun 30, 2021, 02:43

**nfd** @nfd@cybre.space · Jun 30, 2021, 02:43

Jun 30, 2021, 02:43

nfd @nfd@cybre.space

@noiob @cwebber how spectacularly predictable of a result, given that they already did that, lol

yeah i'm very interested in how crawling code without a fat MIT/Apache/CC0/whatever tag got past low/middle management

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