I was active on the Joel On Software Forums prior to that (hi, Patio11) and loved watching the development of Copilot unfold. It was even better that one of the interns was from my tiny undergrad: Rose-Hulman
Yeah, I don't get the hate. I've been using copilot since the release and it's pretty handy. It ain't god's gift to this earth yet, but it's pretty useful for boilerplate scenarios.
Github Copilot violates the licenses of the open source code that it uses as its source material. I, for one, am pissed off about that.
If you don't care about those authors, or don't care about copyright in general, or you agree with Microsoft's sketchy reasoning that copyright violation never occurs in Github Copilot (even though Github Copilot is perfectly capable of regurgitating big verbatim chunks of code from its training corpus)... then you won't get the hate.
I use VS code which doesn't really have great IDE autocomplete. I'll agree with you when it comes to a proper IDE though or if you use a quality JetBrains product!
The answer is straightforward. If the similarity is such that a court would judge that copyright infringement occurred, then that code would have belonged under the GPL.
Convincing a court to make a judgement of infringement is not an easy threshold to cross. But Github Copilot, like many AIs, is less judicious than humans about not reproducing its inspirations verbatim: https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309
Yeah, I'm not fully convinced it's as bad as a lot are making it out to be. What is even considered a copyrightable code snippet?
If GPL code had a function like `int add_1(int x) { return x + 1; }` and you copy and pasted it, is that really stealing?
What about if you wrote identical code without having looked at the GPL code?
Or even if you've seen the GPL code but type it from memory?
Or if you copy from someone that illegally copied the GPL code?
It seems very non trivial with small functions like this, which is exactly the kind of code copilot outputs anyways. It's not like you're stealing large and unique parts of the code.
Because 'Copilot' will (obviously) cause people to think GitHub Copilot. Nobody can seriously claim to think this is the most prominent 'Copilot' out there.
Did you actually look at both? The article is about a remote support app and my link is to a spending and investment tracker. I'm pretty sure those are not the same thing.
True but also highly context dependent, logged in/out, incognito, vpn, timezone, geography, os, recent searches of others on your network, neigherborhood etc all seem to influence what you see.
It would be interesting to find out if the fact that GitHub came out with Copilot, and effectively taking over the term for many users (such as yourself), contributed to Copilot's demise (eg. by speeding it up).
I now use a tool called Shortcut on a project. It used to be called Clubhouse until recently. Then (the other) Clubhouse became popular.
These things happen (through no ill intent on anyone's part), and can have substantive impact on the less popular products or sites.
What would you have suggested instead? Adding a caveat doubling the length of the title? It’s the name of the linked post, all in line with the HN guidelines.
Calling it ”clickbait” when it is exactly what it says on the tin with no deception involved seems silly.
I typically open the comments first before I read the article, so that I can more easily preserve the link between content and discussion by opening the article from the comments page.
Thank you for limiting my "Nooooo..." to only 5 'o's.
I resolved many a tech issue for parents from several thousand km away, all thanks to Copilot.
It was really, really good for its time -- paying, deploying the agent on the remote end, tunneling through a shared publicly reachable host. Every time I paid my $5 I was happy to do it.
> As a bonus, they're offering Copilot users 95% off the first year, meaning that you will get HelpDesk for a full year for just $24.98,
I don't know the particular of the plans but a quick visit to RemotePC and they're trying to entice me with "SAVE* 90% $1.95 First Year for 1 computer" if I switch.
I assume the Copilot plan is not considered a competitor, or maybe has larger limits, also hopefully "1 computer" means one target, and not a total network of 1 computer :)
Regardless, the RemotePC website gave me intense GoDaddy vibes, which is not good.
You got the ad for the lowest plan, "Consumer one computer" (yes - that's only one computer, likely a parent or a grandparent). They're discussing here the highest plan, "Enterprise".
I used to use Copilot and it worked well. While I moved out of a function needing this kind of service, I am surprised it is shutting down. IMO the leading product in this space (TeamViewer) is such a customer-hostile product that I would have expected Copilot, or some other alternative, to evolve into a strong competitor.
No, it was a developer blog. Back when blogs were actually a thing. DailyWTF and Coding Horror are still around from then. And RaymondC's OldNewThing that shows up here once in a while, though initially I remember him blogging internally at MSFT, so maybe that doesn't count.
I remember fondly following the Project Aardvark blog posts through the summer of 2005-- it was such an exciting time! It's still online here: https://www.projectaardvark.com
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadhttps://glitch.com
I was active on the Joel On Software Forums prior to that (hi, Patio11) and loved watching the development of Copilot unfold. It was even better that one of the interns was from my tiny undergrad: Rose-Hulman
I was just starting my own software business so it was quite inspiring at the time.
If you don't care about those authors, or don't care about copyright in general, or you agree with Microsoft's sketchy reasoning that copyright violation never occurs in Github Copilot (even though Github Copilot is perfectly capable of regurgitating big verbatim chunks of code from its training corpus)... then you won't get the hate.
Not even the FSF had made that claim yet.
They are still in research mode:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-funded-call-for-whit...
https://www.fsf.org/news/publication-of-the-fsf-funded-white...
The latest conclusions so far:
https://www.fsf.org/licensing/copilot/copyright-implications...
"Copilot and its developer-customers likely do not infringe developers’ copyrights."
Convincing a court to make a judgement of infringement is not an easy threshold to cross. But Github Copilot, like many AIs, is less judicious than humans about not reproducing its inspirations verbatim: https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309
If GPL code had a function like `int add_1(int x) { return x + 1; }` and you copy and pasted it, is that really stealing?
What about if you wrote identical code without having looked at the GPL code?
Or even if you've seen the GPL code but type it from memory?
Or if you copy from someone that illegally copied the GPL code?
It seems very non trivial with small functions like this, which is exactly the kind of code copilot outputs anyways. It's not like you're stealing large and unique parts of the code.
Copilot, a software product created and named 7 years before GitHub came out with a different product using the same name, is shutting down.
While researching, I found a third copilot: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/copilot-the-smart-money-app/id...
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/miracheck-copilot/id1183839722
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/copilot-gps-navigation/id50467...
And more https://gist.github.com/alexyorke/4ee414e71c9abc473b04cf8561...
The old Fog Creek Copilot, that I know about from following Joel's blog.
Your bubble is not everyone's bubble.
Search Google for 'copilot' and take peak outside your own bubble.
https://imgur.com/a/JEGuiXk
I mean you don't have to take my word for it - see how many other comments there are here saying the same thing.
- CoPilot Buy Smarter (copilot.app)
- GitHub Copilot (copilot.github.com)
- Copilot (copilotgps.com)
- Copilot (copilot.com)
- Copilot (copilot.search)
- Copilot (copilot.money)
- CoPilot (copilotai.com)
- CopilotIQ (copilotiq.com)
I now use a tool called Shortcut on a project. It used to be called Clubhouse until recently. Then (the other) Clubhouse became popular.
These things happen (through no ill intent on anyone's part), and can have substantive impact on the less popular products or sites.
To be fair, no one is making that claim.
Calling it ”clickbait” when it is exactly what it says on the tin with no deception involved seems silly.
Thank you for limiting my "Nooooo..." to only 5 'o's.
It was really, really good for its time -- paying, deploying the agent on the remote end, tunneling through a shared publicly reachable host. Every time I paid my $5 I was happy to do it.
I don't know the particular of the plans but a quick visit to RemotePC and they're trying to entice me with "SAVE* 90% $1.95 First Year for 1 computer" if I switch. I assume the Copilot plan is not considered a competitor, or maybe has larger limits, also hopefully "1 computer" means one target, and not a total network of 1 computer :)
Regardless, the RemotePC website gave me intense GoDaddy vibes, which is not good.
To attach to what? I’d like to know more about this gruesome experiment of yours…
----
CoPilot -> shutdown (intern project)
Fog Creek -> Glitch
FogBugz -> sold off
Trello -> sold off (Atlassian)
StackExchange -> sold off (intern project to create job board with was later moved over to StackExchange and became it's business model)
CityDesk -> shutdown
Kiln -> ???
----
Joel has been working on https://hash.ai but haven't heard much about what they are doing.
I wonder if any Wasabi transpiler code is still out in the wild. For those not aware, Wasabi generated PHP from ASP code.
There were many others, now long gone.
It is. I still have a FogBugz account, and I saw a Wasabi stack trace in my admin notifications the other day.
Also, Joel's midterm report: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/07/07/project-aardvark-m...
I thought it was GitHub Copilot.