Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Posted Jul 1, 2022 13:42 UTC (Fri) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644)
In reply to: Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come! by eduperez
Parent article: Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

To be fair to CoPilot, I think that argument is only solid for output which is a verbatim copy of one specific input. Given that most of CoPilot's suggestions are not verbatim copies of one specific input, I'm not sure how useful it is in the general case. Just because a few of its outputs are blatant copyright infringement, I don't think that it necessarily follows that all of its outputs are.

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Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Posted Jul 1, 2022 14:14 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (6 responses)

Just because a few of its outputs are blatant copyright infringement, I don't think that it necessarily follows that all of its outputs are.

But nor can one conclude that the particular output in front of one is necessarily free of any copyright infringement.

As far as I'm concerned this lack of provenance is one major problem with the approach. The other major problem with the approach is that it is by no means guaranteed (AFAIK) that Copilot output actually does what it is supposed to do. I wonder whether it is usually less work to validate, debug, and clean up something that came out of Copilot than it is to come up with the same thing from scratch and avoid the entire minefield in the first place – i.e., whether Copilot is “worth it” in daily practice.

Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Posted Jul 2, 2022 13:13 UTC (Sat) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (5 responses)

Have you used it?

Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Posted Jul 2, 2022 22:31 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (4 responses)

Doesn't really matter. According to its own FAQ (and not just according to common sense), Copilot output code should be “rigorously tested”, “reviewed and vetted”, and “checked for security vulnerabilities”. (The Copilot FAQ also says that Copilot's output “may contain insecure coding patterns, bugs, or references to outdated APIs or idioms” and that it “may not always work, or even make sense”. Yep. Sounds just what we need. Bring it on.)

As a programmer I probably spend more time writing tests for my code and ensuring that it does what it is supposed to do than I do to come up with the code in the first place; if I need to write the tests and debug the code, anyway, then having to write it first is really the least of my worries, and if I write the code myself then at least copyright is much less likely to be an issue. Also, writing the code from scratch will probably be more creative and fun than having to bang dubious Copilot output into shape if it contains “insecure coding patterns” or “references to outdated APIs”, let alone subtle errors that render it inappropriate for the actual use case at hand.

Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Posted Jul 2, 2022 23:20 UTC (Sat) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (3 responses)

So you haven't - that is quite obvious, given you don't really seem to understand what it's really good at. Try it out and you'll see.

Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Posted Jul 2, 2022 23:51 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

Whatever. The examples on their web site leave me underimpressed. E.g., the “IsPrimeTime.java” example takes a comment that reads

// Math.isPrime(int) returns whether the given number is prime or not
@Test

and completes that to

// Math.isPrime(int) returns whether the given number is prime or not
@Test
public void testIsPrime() {
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(2));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(3));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(5));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(7));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(11));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(13));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(17));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(19));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(23));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(29));
}

which is obviously an impressive blob of code but fails completely at its stated purpose. If that is really the best Copilot can do, to a point where they feel they must put it out as an advertisement, then please explain to me again why I should want to pay for drivel like that.

Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Posted Jul 3, 2022 10:47 UTC (Sun) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (1 responses)

It's a fancy autocomplete tool, not a replacement for an engineer. I've been using it since the preview started, and it's incredibly good at saving time when dealing with boilerplate and other such repetitive chunks. It really excels when for example dealing with a library with a very verbose interface, or when adding yet another unit test to a file full of tests with some variations between them, or when a reusing the same pattern across a project. It doesn't conjure up creative new algorithms on its own, that's not it's job, it's the coder's. And of course you need to check what comes up, you don't blindly accept anything it throws at you, just like you do with ye olde autocomplete, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Posted Jul 3, 2022 15:45 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

If what Copilot does is worth $100/year to you (or your employer), then more power to you. From the examples on the web site – which I presume are showing Copilot at its best, because why else pick them as examples? –, I personally don't see that for me, and in any case my favourite editor is not among the ones Copilot supports, so getting to where I could actually use Copilot in the first place would be too much of a hassle as far as I'm concerned, so I think I'll pass.