Earlier this summer, Microsoft’s github released Copilot an AI pair programmer, which could have been a nice breakthrough in the programming world but actually fuels debates and concerns within the community especially the FSF (Free Software Foundation).
Copilot uses an OpenAI based Machine Learning which trains its neuronal network thanks to a dataset of billions of lines of code hosted on github and then suggests you some code according to what you’re typing.
The FSF has raised several concerns and called for a white paper to clear up the grey areas.
In a non-exhaustive way, the points of concern reported by the developers to the FSF and the FSF itself are of legal and copyright nature. Indeed, it is unclear how Copilot uses hosted github projects, which can be private or public, under copyright or not, to train itself.
The white paper was expected to be submitted by August 23th. This due date being over, we can expect to get more detail soon. so wait & see.
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