“The most intelligent AI code generation tool out there and we have the data to prove it.”
been using for a few weeks; it’s quite competitive to copilot only coming shy of supermaven in speed and performance
https://codeium.com/blog/code-assistant-comparison-copilot-tabnine-ghostwriter-codeium
I looked into this previously, and found that there is a major problem for most users in the Terms of Service at https://codeium.com/terms-of-service-individual.
Their agreement talks about “Autocomplete User Content” as meaning the context (i.e. the code you write, when you are using it to auto-complete, that the client sends to them) - so it is implied that this counts as “User Content”.
Then they have terms saying you licence them all your user content:
“By Posting User Content to or via the Service, you grant Exafunction a worldwide, non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid right and license (with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to host, store, reproduce, modify for the purpose of formatting for display and transfer User Content, as authorized in these Terms, in each instance whether now known or hereafter developed. You agree to pay all monies owing to any person or entity resulting from Posting your User Content and from Exafunction’s exercise of the license set forth in this Section.”
So in other words, let’s say you write a 1000 line piece of software, and release it under the GPL. Then you decide to trial Codeium, and autocomplete a few tiny things, sending your 1000 lines of code as context.
Then next week, a big corp wants to use your software in their closed source product, and don’t want to comply with the GPL. Exafunction can sell them a licence (“sublicence through multiple tiers”) to allow them to use the software you wrote without complying with the GPL. If it turns out that you used some GPLd code in your codebase (as the GPL allows), and the other developer sues Exafunction for violating the GPL, you have to pay any money owing.
I emailed them about this back in December, and they didn’t respond or change their terms - so they are aware that their terms allow this interpretation.
These things cost money to run, so how are they offering it for free? Who’s paying for it? How do they profit from our using it? What’s the catch?
Edit: Someone else here found that the license basically means all the code you write with it becomes theirs. Seems like we found the catch.
Edit: Someone else here found that the license basically means all the code you write with it becomes theirs. Seems like we found the catch.
Bahaha if this is true, then this tool is basically pathetic as it’s almost completely useless.
I’m using GitHub Copilot and haven’t dug into the license. It’s possible I’m technically handing all my code over to Microsoft.
Nice. Another model trained on GPL code.
missed opportunity to name it codeine
I switched from Copilot to Codeium after only a couple of months of Copilot use - just based on the cost since currently I’m just a hobby coder.
The main difference I’ve noticed is that Codeium doesn’t seem as smart about the local context as Copilot. Copilot would look at how I’m handling promises in a project, and stick to that, whereas Codeium would choose a strategy seemingly at random.
A second, and maybe more telling example, is that I do my accounts using ‘plain text accounting’ in VS Code. This is a very niche approach to accounting software and I imagine is hardly in the training sets at all - there certainly would not be a lot of public domain text accounts in the particular format (BeanCount) I use in public code repositories. Codeium doesn’t make any suggestions for entries as I’m entering transactions, whereas Copilot would see that the account names I’m using are present in another file in the project and suggest them, and very quickly figure out the formatting of transactions and suggest them correctly.
