My understanding is that when Copilot automatically inserts some GPL licensed code fragment into your project, your project automatically has to become GPL licensed, whether you want and realize or not.
>your project, your project automatically has to become GPL licensed, whether you want and realize or not.
This is not exactly true, GPL is not magic that automatically re-licenses your code behind your back. What actually happens is your are in violation of the GPL , one way to solve the violation is that you re-license your code (so you have to do it, it is not happening behind your back automatically). I am not aware of any case where someone did not want to GPL the software and a judge forced him to do it. This kind of problems are also happening with proprietary license, some developer copy-pastes some properietary code and in the end you have to make ti right remove the code and make a deal with the party you damaged.
> The C compiler in use at the time was GCC, which was released under the GPL. To avoid the restrictions of this code, NeXT provided its front end as a library that end users would link against GCC, thereby avoiding the GPL (which only applies to distribution of the software, not how you use it). This little legal maneuver didn't work, however, so NeXT was forced to release the code.
It's worse than this: Even permissive licenses like MIT require you credit the original author. Copilot regurgitates code without recognizing the original author at all, violating pretty much any and all licenses.
The GPL license is license-viral, the BSD license is just attribution-viral, as I understand it.
For BSD licensed code, you must reproduce the license and attribution for that code, but the rest of the code can be licensed as you want. For GPL code there are additional requirements.
simion314|4 years ago
This is not exactly true, GPL is not magic that automatically re-licenses your code behind your back. What actually happens is your are in violation of the GPL , one way to solve the violation is that you re-license your code (so you have to do it, it is not happening behind your back automatically). I am not aware of any case where someone did not want to GPL the software and a judge forced him to do it. This kind of problems are also happening with proprietary license, some developer copy-pastes some properietary code and in the end you have to make ti right remove the code and make a deal with the party you damaged.
drran|4 years ago
> The C compiler in use at the time was GCC, which was released under the GPL. To avoid the restrictions of this code, NeXT provided its front end as a library that end users would link against GCC, thereby avoiding the GPL (which only applies to distribution of the software, not how you use it). This little legal maneuver didn't work, however, so NeXT was forced to release the code.
drran|4 years ago
ocdtrekkie|4 years ago
EdSchouten|4 years ago
I don’t see how the GPL is special in the discussion around Copilot.
jonas21|4 years ago
kbenson|4 years ago
For BSD licensed code, you must reproduce the license and attribution for that code, but the rest of the code can be licensed as you want. For GPL code there are additional requirements.
happymellon|4 years ago
GPL is is Open Source but for you to benefit, you have to make derivative works GPL.
BSD is Open Source and you can close derivatives so that you benefit and you don't have to share back.
I'm not sure how you don't see how an auto-suggest tool that inserts GPL code into yours is different to BSD.