News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on GitHub Copilot is generally available.

Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by ahnick on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @12:41PM (#31826013)
What's the criteria for being considered "a maintainer of a popular open source project"? They never actually publish the criteria anywhere from what I can tell. They just say visit the subscription page and if you are eligible it should be available to you and if you see a charge then you are not eligible. I think though they should still be transparent about what their metric is for determining popular projects on GitHub; otherwise, the code that determines eligibility might be broken and no one would be able to tell. Or worse they could just be lying about it entirely.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by samth on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:00PM (#31826301)
At a minimum, 4.3k stars is not enough, because I don't qualify.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by samth on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @08:15PM (#31830598)
Someone from GitHub reached out to me because of this comment and said they were fixing it. The problem is that Racket's license file isn't simple enough for their automated tools.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by meibo on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:11PM (#31826466)
This is curious - I maintain 2 projects with 2k cumulative stars, and I was able to claim the free access. Wonder what the metric is? Maybe creation date has something to do with it?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by baby on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:25PM (#31826643)
If you want to check if you qualify: https://github.com/github-copilot/free_signup
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by kevincox on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:55PM (#31826997)
I get " Congratulations! You are eligible to use GitHub Copilot for free." that was unexpected but in retrospect https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/ is pretty popular. (Currently 9.8k stars)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by samth on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:33PM (#31826764)
Yeah that just redirects me to the paid page. I do wish the criteria were a little more transparent.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by acro5piano on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @10:48PM (#31831495)
I have a repository with 625 stars, but it redirects to the subscription page.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by thamer on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @02:04PM (#31827102)
Reporting on my own experience, I got access to Copilot a few days after it was announced and am currently not expected to pay for it.

I started a project that currently has 9.4k stars (now mostly maintained by someone else), and still maintain a project that has 2.5k stars.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by andrewmcwatters on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:29PM (#31826692)
A sample of the first 25k repositories and their stargazers on GitHub shows that the top 1% have over 600 stars, and the top 0.1% have nearly 5,000 stars. That's a very small sample, however.

[1]: https://github.com/andrewmcwattersandco/github-statistics

[2]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HBSwxr0jkUoMulQxyVTC...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by kevincox on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:53PM (#31826974)
> People who maintain popular open source projects receive a credit to have 12 months of GitHub Copilot access for free. A maintainer of a popular open source project is defined as someone who has write or admin access to one or more of the most popular open source projects on GitHub

https://github.com/pricing#i-work-on-open-source-projects-ca...

I like how "open source project" == "on github". Can't say that I am surprised though.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by Washuu on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @02:42PM (#31827480)
I authored/contribute/maintain stuff that is used by tens of millions of people world wide. I do not qualify. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by kootenpv on Wednesday June 22, 2022 @12:36PM (#31838246)
I have 2 popular python projects, one with 4.9k and one with 2.3k stars and I don't qualify :/

https://github.com/kootenpv

If anyone knows why pls let me know

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by notamy on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @12:44PM (#31826064)
> What's the criteria for being considered "a maintainer of a popular open source project"?

The FAQ [0] says

> A maintainer of a popular open source project is defined as someone who has write or admin access to one or more of the *most popular open source projects* on GitHub

(emphasis added)

[0] https://github.com/pricing#i-work-on-open-source-projects-ca...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by netr0ute on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @12:44PM (#31826071)
That's the problem, what is a "most popular project?"
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by Beltalowda on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:14PM (#31826504)
It goes on to say "Simply visit the GitHub Copilot subscription page to see if you are one of the open source maintainers that meet our criteria for a complimentary subscription"

When I go to https://github.com/github-copilot/free_signup it says:

" Congratulations! You are eligible to use GitHub Copilot for free.

Thanks for being a part of our open source and education communities. GitHub Copilot uses the Codex AI model to offer coding suggestions."

I have a project with about 3k stars, and regularly contribute to another project ~4k stars (Where I'm also the primary maintainer, although it's not on my account), as well as some things in with hundred and dozens of stars.

I don't how high up that is in the ranking, although given that most projects get 0 stars I suspect it's probably higher than you'd might expect.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by ahnick on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @12:46PM (#31826095)
Ummm, yes, that was my original point. What does "one or more of the most popular open source projects on GitHub" mean exactly? Do you need a certain number of github stars on your project? Are you listed on some "most popular github projects specific page"? or what?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by bumpa on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:01PM (#31826315)
I got this free access. Tried to figure how to request this "Verified" status, whatever it means, but github seems to set it automatically and notified me "you are eligible to use GitHub Copilot for free". I'm not sure how exactly they do it and what defines "the most popular open source projects". The most popular repo (by stars) I have is with 3k stars. Apparently it is enough, not sure.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by natefinch on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:48PM (#31826923)
There's a definition somewhere in the FAQ, it's like the top 1000 projects in each of the top 34 most popular languages on GitHub, as long as those projects have some minimum number of stars and forks.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by blagie on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @10:39PM (#31831469)
There isn't a definition. The FAQ states:

    People who maintain popular open source projects receive a credit to 
    have 12 months of GitHub Copilot access for free. A maintainer of a
    popular open source project is defined as someone who has write or admin 
    access to one or more of the most popular open source projects on GitHub. 
    Simply visit the GitHub Copilot subscription page to see if you are one of 
    the open source maintainers that meet our criteria for a complimentary 
    subscription. If you do, you should see that you can add GitHub Copilot 
    for no charge. If you see a charge on the purchase page then this means 
    that you do not qualify at this time. Once awarded, if you are still a 
    maintainer of a popular open source project when your initial 12 months 
    subscription expires then you will be able to renew your subscription for 
    free.
As the principal author of a project used by millions, working 100% on open source today, I can say it's not free for me. My code is being used to train your models, but I can't use your models without paying you. That goes against the spirit of my share-alike license.

"Write or admin access" is also a pretty crappy way of evaluating people. "Write or admin access" goes by politics, rather than by contribution. It's also hostile towards junior developers, who might not have commit access on projects which work by forks and PRs.

This also excludes folks like Richard Stallman who don't host their projects with you (not that he'd use copilot, but just saying).

github does a fine job reviewing nonprofits. It feels half-baked that it can't identify open-source contributors.

At the very least, you should enable anyone whose code you scraped to train codex to use codex. I can make codex spit out code very similar to code I wrote. It's clear it was trained on it, and is creating a derivative work.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:GitHub Copilot is generally available by itsharshag on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @10:10PM (#31831318)
Can you please share the link for this FAQ?
[ Parent | on HN ]