1 year ago

CoPilot, GitHub’s https://github.com/features/copilot continues to generate controversy in some quarters of the open source community. Because of this move to charge for the service, two open source advocacy groups, the Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom Conservancy, both recommended that developers who care open source software cut their ties with GitHub altogether.

But for SFC, GitHub charging for a service built on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) was the breaking point.

A lot of open source projects on GitHub have a https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html which demands anything made with the code must also be made available as open source.

GitHub is using open source code to build a proprietary service that can be accessed only by way of a paid subscription.