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GITHUB AND COPILOT

Open-source-software creators, users, and owners have serious concerns regarding Microsoft’s new Copilot auto-coding product. As a result, a San Francisco–based law firm seeks to interview anyone with a stake in open-source software and/or experience using Copilot. Despite Microsoft’s protestations to the contrary, it does not have the right to treat source code offered under an open-source license as if it were in the public domain.

Copilot was announced by Microsoft in 2022. It is powered by OpenAI’s Codex, which is trained on billions of lines of public code. According to Microsoft, Copilot is an extension that works as an "AI pair programmer" that helps write code faster by auto-filling suggestions based on the code and comments written by the user on their editors (Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Neovim, etc.). However, according to reports, in practice, Copilot can act more as an auto-coder that suggests large blocks of code without alerting the Copilot user that the code is only useable subject to the terms of its open-source license. Microsoft has long been antagonistic to open-source software, waging a war against open-source pioneer Linux for decades as one notable example. Which is why developers feared how Microsoft might leverage GitHub's central role in the open-source community when it first acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018. With Copilot those fears may be coming to fruition.

Microsoft has monetized Copilot by offering it as a subscription service. Although Copilot is free for verified students and maintainers of popular open-source projects, “Copilot requires running software that is not free, such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE or Visual Studio Code editor.”

COMPUTER-CODE

THE CONFLICT

As touched on above, after Copilot launched, some developers and programmers became concerned about Copilot's potential to infringe their rights through its code suggestions. It appears Microsoft is profiting from others' work by disregarding the conditions of the underlying open-source licenses and other legal requirements.

The Copilot FAQ states “The code you write with GitHub Copilot’s help belongs to you,” and admits “GitHub does not own the suggestions GitHub Copilot generates.” However, it also notes "about 1% of the time, a suggestion may contain some code snippets longer than ~150 characters that matches the training set." Independent analysis has found “[i]n files where Copilot is enabled, it accounts for nearly 40% of code in popular programming languages like Python.”

Copilot has been criticized by tech news sites as well as prominent individuals on social media:

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CONTACT US

We are a San Francisco–based law firm, we are actively investigating this matter and seeking interested parties to interview for further information.

Please contact us if:

  • You have stored open-source code on GitHub (publicly or privately) or on any other public code repository, or if you otherwise have reason to believe your code was used to train OpenAI’s Codex and/or Copilot.
  • You own—or represent an entity that owns—one or more copyrights, patents, or other rights in open-source code.
  • You represent a group that advocates for open-source code creators.
  • You are a current or past GitHub Copilot user.
  • You have information about Copilot you would like to bring to our attention.

Any information provided will be kept in the strictest confidence as provided by law.