GitHub just announced the commercialization of its AI programming assistant Copilot. Copilot is trained with open source free software code bases. When developers write code, they automatically supplement subsequent codes according to the context such as function names. In many cases, Copilot supplements code copies from open source code bases. This raises licensing issues. The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and defending open source free software, attempted to address the issue in discussions with Microsoft/GitHub, but was repeatedly ignored or even ignored. It made a formal statement announcing its commitment to helping open source free software projects migrate off GitHub , not mandatory for existing member projects, but no longer accepting new members without long-term plans to migrate from GitHub. The SFC said it asked Microsoft/GitHub why Copilot was only trained with open source free software and not private Microsoft Windows and Office code repositories as part of the training set? Microsoft’s refusal to answer suggests it is more focused on its own “intellectual property” and is willing to ignore and erode the rights of users of open source free software.
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