Update on "Co-authored-by: Copilot" in commit messages · Issue #314311 · microsoft/vscode

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

Update on the co-authored saga from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1t2f3h5/enabling_ai_co_author_by_default_by_cwebster99/

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really_not_unreal@reddit

Doesn't address any of the process failures

The process failure is that there aren't any proper processes left. Weekly feature releases is simply too fast of an iteration cycle for them to properly test things before they are released upon us unsuspecting users-come-QA.

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tedivm@reddit

Weekly releases would be fine in an organization with engineering rigor, but GitHub/Microsoft have none of that. Their testing is garbage and they've fully committed to pushing out microslop at any opportunity. In fact most of their PRs don't even have tests for their new features/functionality in them, and PRs regularly are merged with failing tests, just adds to it. It would be surprising if they didn't break things all the time with their approach to development.

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omgpop@reddit

Would you say the PR itself was vibe coded? IIRC it was like a 2 line config change. I mean probably it was but the decision and failure was entirely human imo

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

Considering the logic was broken, it was by a PM, with no PR or commit descriptions, I'd say highly likely.

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Houndie@reddit

But the logic wasn't present in the PMs PR. The PR in question is just basically turning a false to a true to turn the feature on.

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

How does that make that PR any better? It's like defending a long list of commits by Jia Tan, and saying the one that enabled the exploit wasn't the one that added it.

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dlm2137@reddit

Because turning on a release flag is exactly the kind of PR a PM should be self-serving, if they are going to be coding anything.

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Crafty_Independence@reddit

To be pedantic, that is not a release flag, it's a default configuration.

Usually default configuration should still be devs, but either way you only do it after thorough testing.

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dlm2137@reddit

Yea, I just read the article.

Either way, it’s changing a single value. It’s exactly the kind of ticket I’d give my PM if they were bugging me for something they can try, to get them off my back. “Sure Jan, take this one”.

Everything that went wrong here happened upstream of that decision.

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Crafty_Independence@reddit

Agreed. I'm in an org with non-technical PMs, so I suppose I'm already a bit biased about PMs making any commits at all.

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Houndie@reddit

It doesn't make it less of a fuck up. But you called it a "PM's vibe coded PR" , citing the bug as evidence. Theres no evidence that the PM wrote the bug, just that they made the very simple change to turn the feature on.

Yall acting like this was a PM gone rogue, when this was almost certainly a feature developed by a team, the PM just wrote the PR to turn it on (which a senior dev approved and merged)

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frymaster@reddit

the point is, that PR that had no pushback was not the PR that contained the logic error. The logic error had happened some time before

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

Does that somehow make the original PR better or less controversial?

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frymaster@reddit

if by "original PR" you mean the one referred to in https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1t2f3h5/enabling_ai_co_author_by_default_by_cwebster99/ - yes, I think that PR is fine. There's certainly no broken logic in it.

It means there are other PRs, somewhere else, that are very poor indeed, but not that one.

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runawayasfastasucan@reddit

That doesnt change anything. There is an expression about two wrongs and 0 rights.

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liveoneggs@reddit

A vibe coded change would have included five paragraphs of fluffy nothing language in the PR and an actual book in the commit messages.

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RustOnTheEdge@reddit

It's interesting how they push this guy forward as the spokesperson, and the PM that did this horrible act of fraud is nowhere to be found.

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Somepotato@reddit

A good PM makes such a massive difference to the way of working. And in the age of AI you'd think it'd be easier than ever to be a good PM because action items summaries are easier to do now.

But no let's use AI to vibe code slop and ignore our actual duties as a PM

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

Yeah, I don't understand why the dev is being thrown under the bus in this situation.

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DivideSensitive@reddit

Because the devs are not the one deciding who will be thrown under the bus.

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evildevil90@reddit

…under duress

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r2d2rigo@reddit

Source for this, other than Reddit comments mad because the PM is a woman?

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Front-Necessary-5257@reddit

I don't think is because is a woman, is because is a PM that vibecoded and made a PR that affected negatively the experience of the users

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

I think there was only one heavily-downvoted misogynistic comment I can think of. I don't think anyone's gender is the issue here.

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jc-from-sin@reddit

It was not a dev that made the original change.

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

That's what I'm saying. The PM should be the one doing these posts.

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Houndie@reddit

This is the dev who did the code review, and merged the original PR. Yall acting like this is done rogue PM when this decision was probably made as part of a team, with the PM just being the one who has their name on the PR.

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Leading-Ability-7317@reddit

Depends on the level of the dev. If they are Staff+ then they could have probably pushed back. But, if not then there is a power imbalance and there could be political consequences for doing so. Microsoft has done layoffs recently which also puts them in a position of just trying to keep their job and not be labeled as difficult.

PMs operate with a lot of visibility so while the dev may not directly report to them they can make that persons life difficult.

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Swimming_Gain_4989@reddit

For real. If communicating a failure in process and future roadmap isn't a PM's responsibility than what is?

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mpanase@reddit

PM's responsibility

They are there to facilitate something very important and impossible to define. Not to be responsible for anything xD

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pip25hu@reddit

I'm not sure who the technical leader of the VSCode project is, but it's certainly not the PM. It's that person's responsibility that this was released, even if the PM and others were pressuring them about it.

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0xe1e10d68@reddit

I’m also not sure I like the trend of issues like this when they revolve around some controversial thing or a fuck up devolving so often into debates, argument, and non-constructive critique.

For an issue a lot of the things people say in those situations are kinda off topic. There needs to be some forum to discuss, sure, but that doesn’t have to be an issue; and even when discussing these things somewhere people could at least try to be more constructive and do less of the piling on.

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HommeMusical@reddit

This is not a symmetrical problem.

Microsoft is a three trillion dollar for-profit company, and one that been rapacious and underhanded for all fifty years of its existence.

When they push destructive garbage like this on us, with no consultation whatsoever, we have every right to simply yell at them to let them know, particularly since we have so few other ways to effect change from large, irresponsible companies.

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runawayasfastasucan@reddit

Its not our job to be constructive about Microsofts internal prosesses. If you get a fly in your soup in a restaurant you shouldn't have to be constructive about it.

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0xe1e10d68@reddit

Like who does it benefit if somebody barges in and loudly proclaims that when mistakenly things that Copilot wasn’t involved in being labeled as being co-authored by it that is Microsoft committing fraud. Yeah, really helpful smartass.

There’s a totally valid conversation to be had about the core issues at hand here; but neither in the actual issue or a discussion does it contribute anything to stir up outrage and anger like claiming it’s fraud. It only wastes the time of everybody who is interested in constructively finding out what happened and looking for solutions to prevent it in the future.

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spacelama@reddit

He approved and merged the earlier change.

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ficiek@reddit

"Bug in the code".

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normalmighty@reddit

Yeah I don't get it. It'd be like having "co authored by vscode" in commit where you used that ide to view or edit files. It has nothing to do with the commit.

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TrespassersWilliam@reddit

That was what bothered me the most too. It overloads the purpose of the commit message, all the worse that it was for something so dumb.

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Thisconnect@reddit

LLM output is by definition uncopyrightable because LLM cannot be an author

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ric2b@reddit

Can my linter or my IDE be an author? It's the same issue.

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openforbusiness69@reddit

I hate how the PM has been scapegoated here. So many assumptions that the PM is non-technical, or "vibe coded" the change, or make the change without permission.

I have worked with many technical PMs. A two-line config change does not mean it was vibe coded. The PM could have been instructed by management.

How about we pile on to Microslop's process, policy, and decision making, rather than the PM.

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

Your speculation is as good as everybody else's. We only have so many facts and no explanation what happened: a broken, controversial PR from a PM got merged without a proper review. And only when the community noticed the change, was it reverted/addressed.

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Control_Is_Dead@reddit

I mean it’s open source, we don’t have to speculate here’s the actual code change (not just the feature flag to flip it on for everyone):

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/pull/296435

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

That doesn't really explain the decision making process behind those changes.

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double-you@reddit

It doesn't really matter if the PM is technical or not, I don't know why people care about that. But if you are not working with the code normally and there's a dev present, you should not be touching the code. Management making changes means either a "rogue manager" or panicking upper management with pushover middle management and that's never good.

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deong@reddit

That highly depends on the company and culture. I’m a Sr Director, and I’m probably the most technical person in my org — definitely in the top two. I don’t routinely write production code anymore, because it isn’t my job, but I’ll definitely make a quick change and fire off a PR occasionally.

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double-you@reddit

Okay so when you do make quick changes, why you? Why that change? Why not somebody else?

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

And do they need to follow the same process as everyone else?

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watsonarw@reddit

I agree, attacking the person who raised the PR is focusing on the wrong problem. It was a bad a change either way, and it was approved and merged by the same PE who is now fixing the mistake.

Everyone is piling on the person who raised the PR, not the person who approved and merged it, and the level of abuse levelled at her on the PR is pretty abhorrent.

I'll get downvoted for saying this, but the ad-hominem levelled at her, with none directed towards the the engineer who approved and merged it reeks of developer elitism and misogyny.

This community needs to do better.

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runawayasfastasucan@reddit

Why not both?

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Scylithe@reddit

I feel like people are getting angry at the wrong thing here. Why add this in the first place? I reckon they're thinking long term, inserting AI attribution into your commits to technically give them co ownership over your code, i.e., the legal right to use it as data to further train the slop monster.

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PerkyPangolin@reddit (OP)

Considering LLMs are already trained on pirated media, I don't think licenses, authorship, or attribution are going to change the situation.

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Scylithe@reddit

I feel like that was a hole in the legal system they exploited (governments weren't ready for the mass piracy of AI training data), but as laws catch up they need something a little more solid

I can't think of another practical reason to do this

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jugalator@reddit

I'm sure it's intentional to advertise Copilot (MS gotta do what they gotta do as they fall behind), but the other effect is advertising AI generated code and I definitely want to have that.

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jdm1891@reddit

Crazy they wanted attribution for fucking autocomplete

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semmaz@reddit

So, no one sees a real issue raised by this? Devs shame to be authored by AI 😂

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JuanAG@reddit

They cant do anything about it because MicroSlop is betting everything on Copilot, they need to force Slop as much and hard as they can

This was not accident, this was on purpouse and of course this will keep happening because i guess Nadella is ok with this at all levels of the company

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spareminuteforworms@reddit

Nadella is a fucking tool.

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RationalDialog@reddit

He seemed cool when he started but somehow I guess stuff gets to your head if you do such a job too long.

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andreicodes@reddit

AFAIK a lot of his successes around Azure and stuff were started before he took reigns, but he became the face of those changes. Still, despite success with Surface and Azure his tenure saw a lot of failures, too. Skype acquisition and development was completely botched, for example, their browser development was essentially shelved, their gaming efforts seem to go mostly nowhere. It's just in his early years he got lucky by having few big successes masking the many-many failures.

Microsoft is a difficult company to manage: so many areas they are involved in, so many products, very complex internal structure, it's a tough ship to steer. Hard to say if there's anyone who could do this job really well. I think his real problem is that he decided that AI adoption is the only potential source for future growth instead of hedging his bets. Microsoft is not a type of company where you can only pick one direction, one industry, and go with it.

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Reverent@reddit

First problem is trying to relate to CEOs, they're flying in completely different social circles from average people and are conditioned to disassociate themselves from the masses.

Second problem is CEOs wade through an echo chamber of self reinforcing delusions about their products and how they're improving the earth (while conveniently lining their pockets). If you've ever been in a room with a vendor talking to actual decision makers, it's almost like they're talking a different language.

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spareminuteforworms@reddit

I don't know. Seems pretty naive to think all the positive vibes around him were natural when he first took the reigns. Its not a court of law, there doesn't need to be a presumption of innocence. Dude is a puppet they wanted to use to rehab the biz image. Worked for a while I guess.

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DDFoster96@reddit

I'm pleased I still use a 2 year old version of vscode, before it gained all the copilot slop.

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yikes_42069@reddit

It appears the rest of you do not know that Microsoft has mandated that everyone can do everything now. PMs are now heavily encouraged, dare I say expected to start doing design work and prototyping. It's org dependent on how intense. This PM may have been given an order by management to commit the change. And for whatever reason it didn't get a thorough review (when higher ups are involved which individual dev has the balls to tell them to slow down?) before merging. The dogpiling and personal attacks are really sad. It's completely misplaced over a feature boo-boo. The call to have someone fired was especially weird. This is a learning opportunity not a career ender. I understand devs have nowhere to lodge their AI frustrations, but some of the reactions here are shameful.

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tumes@reddit

The Venn diagram of people who object to renaming the primary branch to main and who think that it’s not a big deal to steamroll attribution on commits is a perfect circle.

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really_not_unreal@reddit

If Microsoft did this because cared about attribution on commits they would have instead cited the billions of authors who their AIs stole training data from with zero compensation.

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dgkimpton@reddit

Wtf is this idea? "main" is objectively better than "master" in every regard, steamrolling attribution is utterly bonkers.

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ficiek@reddit

What the fuck are you talking about.

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AykutSek@reddit

he disableAIFeatures bypass is the part that should be embarrassing. that flag is the one explicit no ai near my code switch users have, and it didn't override the trailer. that's not a default flip discussion, that's a test plan that treated the kill switch as decorative. process failure on a button labeled off

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