GitHub Copilot investigation · Joseph Saveri Law Firm & Matthew Butterick

What’s wrong with Copi­lot?

What we know about Copi­lot raises legal ques­tions relat­ing to both the train­ing of the sys­tem and the use of the sys­tem.On the train­ing of the sys­temThe vast major­ity of open-source soft­ware pack­ages are released under licenses that grant users cer­tain rights and impose cer­tain oblig­a­tions (e.g., pre­serv­ing accu­rate attri­bu­tion of the source code).

What does Copi­lot mean for open-source com­mu­ni­ties?

By offer­ing Copi­lot as an alter­na­tive inter­face to a large body of open-source code, Microsoft is doing more than sev­er­ing the legal rela­tion­ship between open-source authors and users. Arguably, Microsoft is cre­at­ing a new walled gar­den that will inhibit pro­gram­mers from dis­cov­er­ing tra­di­tional open-source com­mu­ni­ties. Or at the very least, remove any incen­tive to do so.