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From Software Freedom Conservancy
Those who forget history often inadvertently repeat it. Some of us recall that twenty-one years ago, the most popular code hosting site, a fully Free and Open Source (FOSS) site called SourceForge, proprietarized all their code — never to make it FOSS again. Major FOSS projects slowly left SourceForge since it was now, itself, a proprietary system, and antithetical to FOSS. FOSS communities learned that it was a mistake to allow a for-profit, proprietary software company to become the dominant FOSS collaborative development site.
SourceForge slowly collapsed after the DotCom crash, and today, SourceForge is more advertising link-bait than it is code hosting. We learned a valuable lesson that was a bit too easy to forget — especially when corporate involvement manipulates FOSS communities to its own ends. We now must learn the SourceForge lesson again with Microsoft's GitHub.
GitHub has, in the last ten years, risen to dominate FOSS development. They did this by building a user interface and adding social interaction features to the existing Git technology. (For its part, Git was designed specifically to make software development distributed without a centralized site.) In the central irony, GitHub succeeded where SourceForge failed: they have convinced us to promote and even aid in the creation of a proprietary system that exploits FOSS. GitHub profits from those proprietary products (sometimes from customers who use it for problematic activities).
Specifically, GitHub profits primarily from those who wish to use GitHub tools for in-house proprietary software development. Yet, GitHub comes out again and again seeming like a good actor — because they point to their largess in providing services to so many FOSS endeavors. But we've learned from the many gratis offerings in Big Tech: if you aren't the customer, you're the product. The FOSS development methodology is GitHub's product, which they've proprietarized and repackaged with our active (if often unwitting) help.
Microsoft Did It Again, SFC Urges Developers to Quit GitHub
Microsoft Did It Again, SFC Urges Developers to Quit GitHub:
Microsoft's new service for automatically writing AI-based code, Copilot, has sparked outrage in the Open Source community.
"Microsoft loves open source." So much has been put on this slogan recently, only to change the Open Source community's perspective toward the Redmond company.
And while Microsoft was no longer demonized as the worst thing that could happen to the Open Source, certain of the Redmond tech giant's tactics remained regardless of the times.
[...] And now we get to the core of the issue. Copilot is powered by natural language text and openly available source code, including code in GitHub public repositories. And, of course, you must have a paid subscription or a special invitation from Microsoft to access Copilot.
To put it another way. You are a developer who has contributed valuable content to various GitHub projects over the years. Of course, everyone is welcome to use it.
Would you be satisfied if your code was used for profit by a closed-source app without giving you credit? In its classic fashion, this is where Microsoft tramples on moral boundaries.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @01:01PM (6 children)
I can sympathize with the outrage over Copilot doing that, but it does raise a point that many human coders would likely already have been working in a similar way, finding bits of open source code online that do what they need, and basing part of their solution on those. Some might rewrite the code, just adopting the same technique, but others might copy and paste bits.
If they took too much of the code, the license holder might have a case against them, if they're in violation of the license terms. If it's open source, it would be much easier to spot. For closed-source where only the binaries are shipped, it might be almost impossible to detect.
So, yeah, morally, I don't like the idea of a corporation exploiting other people's open source code, particulary in a "big data" automated way, but I'm not sure that the "with an AI" bit makes it more morally wrong. Violating a license was wrong to begin with. Legally I would assume M$ might have something in their Ts and Cs that attempts to override the github users' licenses. I wonder how well that stands up in court.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday July 05 2022, @02:27PM (1 child)
I, on the other hand, cannot sympathize. Open data is being scraped and baked into a product by M$. This has nothing to do with github. You may discuss GPL'ed code. I personally don't see any violation. If you genuinely think this is a violation, invent GPL-4 to clarify matters. Good of M$ to bring up the matter early.
Apart from this I wouldn't even want to use Copilot for free, let alone having access to the model.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @04:25PM
The GPL is all about how code is scraped and baked. I don't know if to call you uninformed or a canonical troll.
Copilot encourages (and makes easy) re-use of GPL code in stuff that may or may not GPL, without even the BSD minimum of crediting the original author(s). It's not a "discussion" of code. The only way to not see a problem is to be a lawyer for Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday July 05 2022, @02:35PM (3 children)
I'm not much of an ideological purist I guess. My approach is this: Microsoft gives a free home to my GPL3 projects. In return, if they want to reuse my code in their shitty closed-source products, go right ahead. What do I care? I gave away the code in the first place didn't I? Fuck if I care what it"s used in. If that's the price for free repos, fine by me.
I only released my code under the GPL3 because if some lawyer wants to tangle with a for-profit over it, I'll be delighted. I remember the Microsoft of yore who spat in my face for years. I'd love nothing better if someone sued them. But I sure ain't the one paying a goddamn lawyer to do it on ideological grounds. I was born with a working brain. Still, if you want to uphold the GPL3 in court and my code helps, have at it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by maxwell demon on Tuesday July 05 2022, @05:59PM (2 children)
No, you didn't. If you intended to give your code away, you should have chosen a BSD or MIT license.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dmbasso on Tuesday July 05 2022, @09:04PM
Even that would require crediting the author, if the code is used, which is not the case with copilot.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday July 05 2022, @11:00PM
Re-read what I wrote: I personally don't care what happens to my code. Once I make it public, it's essentially not mine anymore. I personally consider it that way, because I know if someone wants to use it and they're not honest, they'll steal it anyway. So I may as well consider it stolen from the get-go.
But I chose GPL3 in the hope of being an annoyance to one of those companies, if they get caught stealing. Essentially out of spite. It's highly unlikely because clever companies steal discreetly, and also because nobody is interested in my code, but... who knows.
If you care about licensing, GPL3 is as stupid as it comes. It's an idealist's license that no reasonable person likes. The GPL2 is a balanced license, but GPL3 is spiteful. That's why I chose it. But secretly I don't care because I don't really believe open-source licenses have any power in court.