Free Software Foundation and Github Copilot “Copyright Infringement” - FSF

June 29, 2021, saw the release of the GitHub Copilot, a developer assistant service built on AI and a part of Microsoft Visual Code. GitHub Copilot works with a wide range of languages and frameworks, rendering the job lives easier by providing ideas for complete lines or functions immediately inside the IDE. OpenAI Codex powers GitHub Copilot, which was trained on billions of lines of open-source code.

Critical acclaim is not the appropriate phrase used in qualifying media reactions in the wake of the dying embers of June 2021 when GitHub Copilot saw the first light. It was met with aversion, criticism, condescension in the media and GitHub review sections. Simply put, many developers felt something developed by fellow developers threatened their positions. Suggesting code snippets to developers as they wrote code invalidated the need for an assistant, and evolution might mean many things. However, chances that AI would replace developers are considered slim, in the nearest future at least.

These strings of criticisms and myriads of direct questions demand their stance on the subject forced the hand of the highly recognized non-profit software freedom organization, Free Software Foundation. Bill Gates' GitHub Copilot is attracting the full force of the FSF. The same cannot be said for Satya Nadella, the individual that has held the position of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft since February 2014. It is not big enough of a burden to keep him out of bed.

From the FSF's vantage point, Copilot is outright 'unacceptable and unjust.' It is incorporated in Visual Studio Code, a software that is not freely accessible. Copilot, a Software as a Service (SaaS) alternative, also demeans SaaS. These settled questions are just a ripple in a pool of unanswered questions perceived by the FSF.

The FSF's observations determine that Copilot's adoption of freely licensed software has many ramifications and poses a lot of threats to the free software community in general. Copilot will not be suggesting original code snippets to its users. Developers believe that their code is being used to train this neural network. Users might end up digging up code snippets from the popular GitHub repositories, which puts them at the risk of copyright infringement. Say Microsoft manages to circumvent these questions with probable reason. They'll have a more challenging time convincing activists that a private software firm creating a service based on their work isn't fundamentally unjust.

According to the FSF, there are legal questions about Copilot that have not been challenged in court. As a result, the group is financing a request for white papers to look into the legal and ethical challenges concerning Copilot, copyright, machine learning, and open-source software.