GitHub Copilot is ‘unacceptable and unjust,’ says Free Software Foundation
By Paul Krill
Editor at Large, InfoWorld |
GitHub Copilot, a Visual Studio Code extension that uses artificial intelligence to help developers write code, has drawn the ire of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which is calling for white papers that address legal and philosophical questions raised by the technology.
GitHub Copilot is “unacceptable and unjust, from our perspective,” the FSF wrote in a blog post calling for white papers on the implications of Copilot for the free software community. The reason is that Copilot requires running software that is not free, such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE or Visual Studio Code editor, the FSF contends, and constitutes a “service as a software substitute” meaning it’s a way to gain power over other people’s computing.
Built by GitHub in collaboration with OpenAI, Copilot is a Visual Studio Code extension that uses machine learning trained on freely licensed open source software to suggest lines of code or functions to developers as they write software. Copilot is currently available in a limited technical preview.
