Free Software Foundation Announces Five Papers Exploring Microsoft's 'GitHub Copilot'

[WhiteHat]

GitHub’s Copilot is an AI-powered autocompletion tool for coders, but the FSF has come up with a new way to describe it:

Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS).

But they also feel the service “immediately raised serious questions for the free software movement and our ability to safeguard user and developer freedom” — which is why last July they’d put out a call for papers from the free software community. And they’re now announcing the results:[W]e concluded there were five papers that would be best suited to inform the community and foster critical conversations to help guide our actions in the search for solutions… The papers contain opinions with which the Free Software Foundation (FSF) may or may not agree, and any views expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent the FSF. They were selected because we thought they advanced discussion of important questions, and did so clearly…
The five papers are:

• Copilot, copying, commons, community, culture

• Copyright implications of the use of code repositories to train a machine learning model

• If software is my copilot, who programmed my software?

• Interpreting docstrings without common sense

• On the nature of AI code copilots

The FSF adds:

“If this subject is of interest to you, we recommend you read this selection of papers and share your thoughts and feedback. Several of the authors have agreed to participate in follow-up discussions which will be held via IRC, LibrePlanet Wiki, and LibrePlanet Discuss mailing list… Whether or not you are able to attend any of the live events, we encourage you to contribute to the discussion on the wiki and mailing list. As stakeholders in free software, the preservation of user freedom and copyleft, we would like to engage the community in any possible actions that must be taken.”