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Publication of the FSF-funded white papers on questions around Copilot
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Publication of the FSF-funded white papers on questions around Copilot
by
Craig Topham
Contributions
Published on
Feb 24, 2022 05:36 PM
FSF-funder whitepapers on github copilot now published
Microsoft GitHub's announcement of an AI-driven Service as a Software
Substitute
(SaaSS)
program called Copilot -- which uses machine
learning to autocomplete code for developers as they write software --
immediately raised serious questions for the free software movement
and our ability to safeguard user and developer freedom. We felt these
questions needed to be addressed, as a variety of serious implications
were foreseen for the free software community and developers who use
GitHub. These inquiries -- and others possibly yet to be discovered --
needed to be reviewed in depth.
In our call for papers
, we set forth several areas of
interest. Most of these areas centered around copyright law, questions
of ownership for AI-generated code, and legal impacts for GitHub
authors who use a
GNU
or other copyleft license(s) for their
works. We are pleased to announce the community-provided research into
these areas, and much more.
First, we want to thank everyone who participated by sending in their
papers. We received a healthy response of twenty-two papers from
members of the community. The papers weighed-in on the multiple areas
of interest we had indicated in our announcement. Using an anonymous
review process, we 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.
These five submissions are not ranked, and we decided it best to just
let the papers speak for themselves. 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. To that end, the FSF is not
providing any summaries of the papers or elaborating on our developing
positions until we can learn further, through the community, how best
to view the situation.
The following papers were selected (alphabetical by title):
Copilot, copying, commons, community, culture
Robert F.J. Seddon, Honorary Fellow, University of Durham
PDF
HTML
CC BY-ND 4.0
Copyright implications of the use of code repositories to train a machine learning model
John A. Rothchild, Professor of Law, Wayne State University and Daniel H. Rothchild, PhD candidate, University of California, Berkeley
PDF
HTML
CC BY 4.0
If software is my copilot, who programmed my software?
Bradley M. Kuhn, Policy Fellow, Software Freedom Conservancy
PDF
HTML
CC BY-ND 4.0
Interpreting docstrings without common sense
Darren Abramson, Associate Professor, Dalhousie University and Ali Emami, assistant professor, Brock University
PDF
HTML
CC BY-ND 4.0
On the nature of AI code copilots
Stuart Fitzpatrick, Doctoral Candidate, Western Sydney University
PDF
HTML
CC BY-SA 4.0
What's next?
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
. Listed below is the schedule and details
for these discussions.
Live events
FSF is planning a series of (now confirmed) live events aimed to
generate discussion around the findings. Please consider joining the
following events:
13:00 EST (19:00 UTC) Thursday, March 3, IRC (
#fsf
),
Q&A with Robert F.J Seddon
13:00 EST (19:00 UTC) Monday, March 7, IRC (
#fsf
),
general discussion
Discussion on pages
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.
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