Communications of the ACM
Coder Explores Class Action Against GitHub for License Violations
Developers are said to be worried about what Copilot means for open source.
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GitHub is facing potential legal action from coder and lawyer Matthew Butterick who claims that GitHub Copilot, an auto-suggestion plug-in for development environments, may be breaking licensing agreements as it mines repositories to feed its suggestions.
Butterick claims that Copilot's developers used these open source repos without due regard for their licensing terms, many of which, for example, will require attribution. Attributions are completely lacking from the tool.
The Software Freedom Conservancy has asked Microsoft for evidence that it is not breaking licensing terms under the concept of "fair use" with Copilot, but has so far not received a satisfactory reply, Butterick says.
Butterick has engaged class-action litigators the Joseph Saveri Law Firm to see if there are grounds for a lawsuit against GitHub.
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