Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit organization that provides a number of services for open source software projects, has announced that it will abandon GitHub and has called on others to follow in its footsteps.
At the heart of the problem is the GitHub Copilot. This is the company’s recently released AI-based coding assistant tool.
Copilot is built on OpenAI’s Codex, and its goal is to suggest code and functions as developers type. It utilizes natural language text and source code from public sources, including code found in GitHub’s public repositories. And that’s exactly the problem, SFC says. GitHub used open source code to build commercial proprietary products.
Great transition
and Blog post (Opens in a new tab), Two members of the SFC said GitHub has established itself as a dominant force in the development of FOSS by building interfaces and social features on Git. As a result, developers are now using FOSS to build their own services.
“We are ending all use of GitHub and announcing a long-term plan to help the FOSS project move from GitHub,” said the duo.
“At this time, we don’t require you to move existing member projects, but we won’t accept new member projects that don’t have a long-term plan to migrate from GitHub. We will provide resources to support member projects that have chosen to migrate. I will support you as much as possible. “
Neither of them are alone.As reported by RegisterDesigner, programmer and lawyer Matthew Butterick also raised the issue of Copilot’s open source license breach.
“Copilot completely disconnects the connection between the input (the code under various open source licenses) and the output (the code algorithmically generated by Copilot),” he writes. “Therefore, after more than 20 years, Microsoft has finally created what it mistakenly accused of being open source: a black hole in intellectual property rights.”
Others say that GitHub’s Terms of Service give them the right to use hosted code to improve their services.
GitHub didn’t immediately respond to your comment request.
via Register
Watch the video here: GitHub in hot water via the new AI coding assistant
