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Comment by Luker88 | Hacker News Reader

Let's leave copilot/AI aside for a moment.

Do you actually have the necessary rights to upload some else's code to github?

When you upload to github, you give it special rights not merely for redistribution and CI stuff.

You give Github the rights to use the code for other github projects. That alone might not be compatible with some licenses (think GPL virality).

So if your software is BSD or anything without attribution I can probably upload it without problems.

But if your license requires so much as attribution, can I give Github the rights to use the code for any other internal project they might have?

Remember that in Github TOS you give grants for any github service, and in some special cases it requires this to be without attribution.

IANAL but I think I lack the necessary rights here, regardless of copilot.

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IANAL but I believe you are incorrect about the rights you grant GitHub. They are still bound by the license you set in your repository, including any copyleft in GPL or attribution requirements. GitHub TOS sections D.4-D.7 spell out the license that you must grant GitHub in order to host code there. “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.” Notably, see also section D.3 which states “If you upload Content that already comes with a license granting GitHub the permissions we need to run our Service, no additional license is required.” I would think any open source license would be sufficient license for those things, like storing and displaying code, and I would think this clause is primarily for code without a clear license not already granting these terms.

To your point about redistribution, see this clause in D.4: “This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service, except that as part of the right to archive Your Content, GitHub may permit our partners to store and archive Your Content in public repositories in connection with the GitHub Arctic Code Vault and GitHub Archive Program.”

Yes, the granted rights seem to be mostly about stuff related to repository management, and not e.g.: using the software (except audio/video).

But section D.7 ("Moral Rights") is about waiving moral rights, which at least in Italy is not legal, and then says: "To the extent this agreement is not enforceable by applicable law, you grant GitHub the rights we need to use Your Content without attribution".

It mostly seems like poor wording of that section not being limited to archiving/displaying, but there is a case where you grant Github something without need of attribution.

Which is against most Open source licenses, which means that I can't upload someone else's code.

Again IANAL, and theoretically open source projects want maximum distribution, but I think this does mean that technically I would grant to Github something I can't grant.

> They are still bound by the license you set in your repository, including any copyleft in GPL or attribution requirements.

Then what gives them the right to use the code for creating proprietary software (Copilot)?

> So if your software is BSD or anything without attribution I can probably upload it without problems.

BSD and MIT licenses absolutely do require an attribution.

most BSD versions require attribution, but there are multiple versions of BSD and at least one (the most basic) does not require attribution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses

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