Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has issued a strong call for free software projects to give up GitHub and to move their repositories elsewhere. There are a number of problems that SFC has identified with the GitHub code-hosting service and, in particular, with its Copilot AI-based code-writing tool that was trained on the community's code stored in the company's repositories. Moving away from GitHub will not be easy, SFC said, but it is important to do so lest the free-software community repeat the SourceForge mistake.

Specifically, we at Software Freedom Conservancy have been actively communicating with Microsoft and their GitHub subsidiary about our concerns with 'Copilot' since they first launched it almost exactly a year ago. Our initial video chat call (in July 2021) with Microsoft and GitHub representatives resulted in several questions which they said they could not answer at that time, but would 'answer soon'. Last week, after we reminded GitHub of (a) the pending questions that we'd waited a year for them to answer and (b) of their refusal to join public discussion on the topic, they responded a week later, saying they would not join any public nor private discussion on this matter because 'a broader conversation [about the ethics of AI-assisted software] seemed unlikely to alter your [SFC's] stance, which is why we [GitHub] have not responded to your [SFC's] detailed questions'. In other words, GitHub's final position on Copilot is: if you disagree with GitHub about policy matters related to Copilot, then you don't deserve a reply from Microsoft or GitHub. They only will bother to reply if they think they can immediately change your policy position to theirs. But, Microsoft and GitHub will leave you hanging for a year before they'll tell you that!