"Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: ... The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."
If there's no license, then it's not open source. This is a term with a standard meaning, and it doesn't just mean that the source is available for reading
Still, if you come across some published source code that does not appear to be licensed and does not specifically define itself as being "Open Source" as defined by the "Open Source Initiative", copyright law applies and you're not allowed to just take it and use it.
GitHub specifically uses the words "source code from publicly available sources" when talking about what they used to train their model on.
As far as I'm aware public code repos aren't by default "Open Source" as defined by the "Open Source Initiative".
Sorry, I was specifically responding to how my parent views open source.
I agree that Copilot was probably trained in part on public code that isn't open source -- GitHub's claim (not saying I agree) is that they don't need a license to train on code.
In this post's comment section alone many use the term "open source" but really mean to say "public-source", others use the two terms interchangeably even when they seem to be aware of the distinction, and then there are people who seem to think that by making your GitHub repo public it becomes OSD-spec "open source" and with that free to use.
It's just so confusing and easy to misinterpret each-others' true meaning.
Thanks for making me aware of the existence of that OSD OSS spec btw! Came across the (recovered) blog post where the term was first announced http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html.
"Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: ... The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."