HomeWinBuzzer NewsMicrosoft’s GitHub Copilot Met with Backlash from Open Source Copyright Advocates

Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot Met with Backlash from Open Source Copyright Advocates

According to some critics, Microsoft’s recently announced GitHub Copilot breaches copyright by using open source code snippets.

-

At the end of last month, Microsoft introduced Copilot, a service that allows programmers tools to write code more easily. However, it seems Copilot is not welcome by some programmers, who have rejected the service. Some going as far as to say the GitHub tool breaches copyright.

system runs on a new AI platform developed by known as Codex. Copilot is designed to help programmers across a wide range of languages. That includes popular scripts like JavaScript, Ruby, Go, Python, and TypeScript, but also many more languages.

“GitHub Copilot understands significantly more context than most code assistants. So, whether it's in a docstring, comment, function name, or the code itself, GitHub Copilot uses the context you've provided and synthesizes code to match. Together with OpenAI, we're designing GitHub Copilot to get smarter at producing safe and effective code as developers use it.”

One of the main criticisms regarding Copilot is it goes against the ethos of because it is a paid service. However, would arguably justify this by saying the resources needed to train the AI are costly. Still, the training is problematic for some people because they argue Copilot is using snippets of code to train and then charging users.

Fair or Not?

Honestly, the negative response towards GitHub Copilot by some users is failing to land with me. If code that has been generated by even something that could be copyrighted? It is also unclear whether Copilot replicates the training snippets exactly of not.

In other words, it should be fine for Copilot to surface code snippet suggestions to users without breaching copyright… again, if any copyright should exist in the first place.

Let's not forget some people are still annoyed by Microsoft buying GitHub for $7bn, while the company's increased closeness to OpenAI has also caused plenty of grudges to be formed. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft responds to the latest round of criticism.

Tip of the day: Is your system drive constantly full and you need to free up space regularly? Try Windows 10 Disk Cleanup in extended mode which goes far beyond the standard procedure. Our tutorial also shows you how to create a desktop shortcut to run this advanced method right from the desktop.

SourceMSPU
Luke Jones
Luke Jones
Luke has been writing about all things tech for more than five years. He is following Microsoft closely to bring you the latest news about Windows, Office, Azure, Skype, HoloLens and all the rest of their products.

Recent News