Comment by dotty-
7 hours ago
I saw this too and immediately thought: well, they published this on GitHub which surely has a clause that grants it a license to use the code for training Copilot for Microsoft at a minimum, sooo should've published on another Git platform.
> This repository is a public mirror. All development is happening elsewhere.
So if I have code on a personal (but publicly exposed) git server with a license that includes the above quoted terms, and someone decides they want to be helpful and publish a public read-only mirror of my code to GitHub, then they’re allowed to accept that license on my behalf? I never did a thing and yet I’m now in a contract with Microsoft? How does this work legally?
Not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure:
1. Microsoft does not gain the license, but will be able to argue that they aren't intentionally committing copyright infringement in the cases where that distinction matters.
2. If Microsoft does something resulting in damages because they thought they had a license, their indemnification clause kicks in and they can recoup those damages from the user who uploaded it (to the extent that that user doesn't go bankrupt anyways)
3. Likely none of this matters because your license can't prevent activities that weren't prohibited by copyright in the first place, and training doesn't appear to be a prohibited activity at least under US law.
When code is published on GitHub, GitHub itself is not bound by the public-facing license, but rather license grants the uploader aggress to as part of the terms of service. That points to the uploader as a responsible party.
In practice though, none of that is even remotely enforceable.
Not sure GitHub has such a clause. Just looked at their terms and don't see it.
See term D.4., the relevant part of which is
> You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like [...] or otherwise analyze it on our servers; share it with other users
That could be boilerplate legalese for "obviously we need access to your code if we're to display and share it (as is the purpose for a public git host)"