Organized | Peng Huizhong Editor | Produced by Tu Min | CSDN (ID: CSDNnews) was born 14 years ago. With the advantages of complete protocol support, Git format repository hosting and other advantages, GitHub has become the most popular code hosting platform for developers. Howeve

| Peng Huizhong Editor | Tu Min produced by

| CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)

was born 14 years ago, with the advantages of complete protocol support, version library hosting in Git format, GitHub has become the most popular code hosting platform for developers.

However, in recent years, some changes in GitHub have caused dissatisfaction among some organizations in the industry. On June 30, the Software Freedom Conservancy (hereinafter referred to as SFC) published a long article on titled "Abandon GitHub, the time has come" on its official website, angrily stating: Due to GitHub's inappropriate behavior, SFC will end its own All uses GitHub and will assist other free software projects in migrating from GitHub. While the SFC will not now mandate that existing members migrate projects, they will no longer accept projects from new members that do not plan to migrate from GitHub.

SFC's refusal of GitHub's service is a strong signal from free software developers to protest their bad behavior to GitHub and Microsoft .

So how did GitHub "annoyed" SFC?

Image source SFC official website

Is GitHub really "good" for free software?

Over the past decade, GitHub has changed the way people program. Not only does it make programming easier, it also changes the way software developers view programming. It found a big problem that millions of people around the world were grappling with—how to collaborate on code—and designed a much-needed solution that led to incredible growth and success.

By building a SaaS service around the open source project Git, GitHub provides value to and monetizes the open source ecosystem. Specifically, GitHub's profits come primarily from those who want to use GitHub tools for internal proprietary software development.

However, SFC believes that although GitHub has always advertised itself as providing a large number of services for so many free software, it can be seen from the many free services of big technology companies: If you are not a GitHub customer, then you are its product. technology companies use free software development methods to develop GitHub products, and GitHub often privatizes and repackages them without the other party's knowledge. The developers of

FOSS have long had a "boil the frog in warm water" mentality with about this kind of behavior on GitHub. The Software Freedom Conservancy also realizes that its tolerance has created part of the problem. When GitHub's behavior becomes worse and worse, they have been excusing, ignoring, and acquiescing... Until recently, finally "should" "Settlement of accounts after the fall" is .

The year-long protracted war between SFC and GitHub

The specific event that "triggered" SFC's big move was GitHub's refusal for a year to respond to SFC's decision on Copilot (AI automatic programming tool) on public code. Questioning the legality of training. Just last week, GitHub announced that Copilot has become a commercial and profitable product, which completely angered SFC. The

incident happened as follows:

• In July 2021, SFC had a video call with representatives of Microsoft and GitHub and asked several questions. They said they could not answer them at the time, but would "answer them soon."
• After six months of no response, SFC wrote in its article " If software is my co-pilot, who programs my software?" These issues were raised publicly in the article "" (https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/feb/03/github-copilot-copyleft-gpl/), but GitHub still has not responded.
• Three weeks later, the SFC established an expert committee to discuss " ethical issues arising from artificial intelligence auxiliary software" (https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/feb/23/comMITtee-ai- assisted-software-github-copilot/), along with a public discussion (https://lists.copyleft.org/mailman/listinfo/ai-assist). They invited representatives from Microsoft and GitHub to participate in public discussions, but Microsoft and GitHub ignored the SFC's invitation.
• In late June 2022, the SFC reminded GitHub about the following 2 points: "1. We have been waiting for these unresolved issues for a year; 2. Why do you refuse to join the public discussion on this topic? " However, GitHub responded in a week Post-response: They will not join any public or private discussions on the issue , as the discussion "on the ethics of AI-assisted software" seems unlikely to change the SFC's position, which is why GitHub did not respond to the SFC.
• On June 22, 2022, GitHub not only refused to respond to SFC, but also announced that Copilot would be commercialized, and SFC's bottom line was finally broken.

It can be seen that GitHub's final position on Copilot is: If the SFC disagrees with GitHub's views on Copilot-related policy matters, then the SFC does not deserve a reply from Microsoft or GitHub. GitHub will only bother to reply if the SFC feels it can immediately change its position to GitHub's policy position. Even so, Microsoft and GitHub will not tell you this answer until a year later! During this period, GitHub has been working hard to promote the commercialization of Copilot!

And the three main questions about Copilot that the SFC has been wanting Microsoft/GitHub to respond to are:

1. In Microsoft and GitHub's public statements, what case law is based on (if any) . GitHub's CEO at the time said: "(1) Training ML systems on public data is fair use (2) The copyright of the output code belongs to the operator, just like the compiler." In order to be transparent and respect the free and open source software community, also Please provide the community with your complete legal analysis to support your claims.

SFC believes that Microsoft and GitHub's refusal to answer indicates that they still stand by their former CEO's statement (which is also their only statement on this issue), but in fact they have no corresponding legal theory to support it.

2. If, as Microsoft/GitHub says, it is allowed to train a model on any code (and allow users to generate code based on that model) without being bound by any license terms, why did you only choose to train Copilot on free software? Model? For example, why are the Microsoft Windows and Office code bases not in your training set?

SFC believes that Microsoft and GitHub's refusal to answer also hints at the real answer to this question. While GitHub is happy to exploit FOSS, they value their intellectual property far more than FOSS does, and are content to ignore and erode the rights of FOSS users rather than their own.

3. Can Microsoft/GitHub provide a list of the licenses used for Copilot's training set, including the name of the copyright holder and/or the name of the Git repository? If can't, then why not provide this information to the community?

SFC believes that the reason GitHub refused to answer is that they did not copy their models carefully, so they did not actually know whose copyright they were infringing, when and how.

In summary, not only were these problems blocked, but in the end, GitHub's actions caused SFC to "go berserk" in anger. Is the legality of

Copilot questionable? After

announced that it was "running away from home", SFC's latest statement also attracted heated comments from more than 400 developers on Hacker News. In response to SFC's powerful accusations, GitHub launched commercialized Copilot. Is its legality true? Is it up for debate? One developer at

pointed out that the question asked by SFC about " Why is the Microsoft Windows and Office code base not in your training set? " is his favorite question.

There are also developers who have the same concerns about the intellectual property rights of artificial intelligence production codes: " artificial intelligence may copy something very close to the original work, which is considered to be an infringement of the original work. "

However, it is Another developer said: " I want to know why you put the code in the public GitHub FOSS repository but don't want it to be copied in any way... I also want to know why people think their code is so special. , so much so that no one could figure it out independently. I think every "opponent" of Copilot is the best developer of all time, right?

and he points out: "If someone uses your (e.g. MIT licensed) code in a closed source commercial software project, that does not relieve you of the freedom of your code to be distributed, your code remains as open and available as before , no one loses any freedom. "

This developer's "weird" statement was also refuted by many people. One of the developers said: "No one claimed that they did not want their code to be copied. People just want derivatives of their code to adhere to the license they choose for their project. And based on your statement and overall tone, I think you are biased against free software just because you don't understand it, but that doesn't mean the ideas are brainless. I'm also curious, why copyright law , which is supposed to protect proprietary software, music, games, writing, etc., doesn't apply to my software, even if it's not the highest quality work? ”

There still seems to be no conclusion regarding this war amid the quarrels between the parties. Will SFC really break away from GitHub completely?

SFC also admitted that giving up GitHub will bring huge sacrifices and inconveniences, and will take a lot of time. But SFC also reminds everyone that it is GitHub that requires FOSS projects to use their proprietary infrastructure, not SFC that requires GitHub's proprietary infrastructure.

Currently, SFC provides an alternative to GitHub, although for most developers. The interface is not that familiar and the site is not very popular, but SFC said it will help improve these alternatives. Currently, SFC has launched a website: GiveUpGitHub.org, which will provide guidance for those who want to leave GitHub. Methods, tools and support.

So, as a FOSS developer on GitHub, will you consider "breaking up" with GitHub?

Reference:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/jun/30/give- up-github-launch/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31932250