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Comment by menaerus

2 days ago

Can you give an example what exactly was copied? I ask because I took a look into MR and original repo, and the conclusion is that the tool only copy-pasted the copyright header but not the code. So I am still wondering - what's wrong with that (it's a silly mistake even a human can make), and where is the copyright infringement everyone is talking about?

> copy-past[ing] the copyright header but not the code [is] a silly mistake even a human can make

Do you mind showing me some examples of that? That seems so implausible to me

Just for reference, here's another example of AI adding phantom contributors and the human just ignoring it or not even noticing: https://github.com/auth0/nextjs-auth0/issues/2432

  • Oh wow. That's just egregious. Considering the widespread use of Auth0, I'm surprised this isn't a bigger story.

  • > Do you mind showing me some examples of that? That seems so implausible to me

    What's so special about it that I need to show you the example?

    • You are claiming humans copy-and-paste copyright headers without copying the corresponding code. To prove you're correct, you only need to show one (or a few) examples of it happening. To prove you incorrect, someone would have to go through all code in existence to show the absence of the phenomenon.

      Hence the burden of proof is on you.

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None of that matters. The header is there, in writing, and discussed in the PR. It is acknowledged by both parties and the author gives a clumsy response for its existence. The PR is simply tainted by this alone, not to mention other pain points.

You may not consider this problematic. But maintainers of this project sure do, given this was one of the immediate concerns of theirs.

  • OxCaml is a fork of OCaml, they have the same license.

    I wasn't able to find any chunks of code copied wholesale from OxCaml which already has a DWARF implementation.

    All that code wasn't written by Mark, AI just decided to paste his copyright all over.

  • It matters because it completely weakens their point of stance and make them look unreasonable. Header is irrelevant since it isn't copyright infringement, and FWIW when it has been corrected (in the MR), then they decided that the MR is too complex for them and closed the whole issue. Ridiculous.

    • An incorrect copyright header is a major red flag for non technical reasons. If you think it is an irrelevant minor matter then you do not undesirable several very important social and legal aspects of the issue.

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