GitHub's newly-available Copilot artificial intelligence (AI) pair programmer suggests blocks of code and algorithms during development to improve productivity and facilitate learning by doing, but critics have raised concerns about the ownership of suggested code.

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke says Copilot was designed as an editor extension that "distills the collective knowledge of the world's developers" to suggest code in real-time, similarly to the predictive AI email composition features with which many users are familiar.

Those email features primarily save users from manually typing out phrases like "Looking forward to hearing back from you!" after beginning to type the commonly used phrase. That's convenient and saves time, but it's likely not capable of writing a complete and specific email or even a cogent paragraph.

Copilot takes this idea further with its ability to suggest "complete methods, boilerplate code, whole unit tests, and even complex algorithms," according to Dohmke.

If Copilot's suggested code is generated from the open source projects hosted in GitHub, who owns that suggested code?

Diversion CEO and veteran software engineer Sasha Medvedovsky noted that "not all open source projects were created equal," citing certain open source software licenses that do not allow the reuse of code despite public availability on GitHub.

GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, states that Copilot is just a tool, meaning Github "does not own the suggestions GitHub Copilot generates. The code you write with GitHub Copilot’s help belongs to you, and you are responsible for it." So the answer isn't GitHub — it's the Copilot user, according to the company.

To Medvedovsky's point, the original writers of the open source code that fuels Copilot's AI don't own the suggested code either, according to the company.

GitHub claims that most of Copilot's suggested code is completely unique, and its internal research found the tool's suggestions contain more than 150 characters that exactly match the code used in training about 1% of the time.

Medvedovsky acknowledged that using code to train an AI model is different from just using code as it is. "But shouldn’t the code’s creators at least be consulted whether they agree to this use of their creation?" Medvedovsky argued.

In a Free Software Foundation (FSF) call for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot last July, the nonprofit raised that "even if everything might be legally copacetic, activists wonder if there isn't something fundamentally unfair about a proprietary software company building a service off their work."

Copilot was released in technical preview last year, and is now available at no cost to verified students and maintainers of "popular" open source projects. All other individual developers can test out the tool with a free 60-day trial, after which the tool will cost $10 per month or $100 per year per user. The company says Copilot will be available to companies to implement with development teams later this year, likely for a cost as well.

However, Dohmke appears optimistic about the positive impacts of Copilot. "Just like the rise of compilers and open source, we believe AI-assisted coding will fundamentally change the nature of software development, giving developers a new tool to write code easier and faster so they can be happier in their lives," he said.

In a similar vein of opposition, the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) late last month launched a campaign calling on free and open source software (FOSS) developers to "give up GitHub" on the grounds that it's unjust for Copilot to be a for-profit product made possible by free and open source code.

Along with Copilot-related issues, the SFC also cites GitHub's contracts with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the company's unsatisfactory responses to activists and GitHub employees who've requested the company cut ties with ICE due to the agency's "problematic policies."

"Regardless of your views on ICE and its behavior, GitHub's ongoing dismissive and disingenuous responses to the activists who raised this important issue show that GitHub puts its profits above concerns from the community," the SFC said.

The SFC also urges individuals who are making decisions and have political power within their organization "to use your power to center community efforts through FOSS platforms rather than GitHub."

"Once someone in power makes the choice to host a project on GitHub, the individual contributors have little choice but to use these proprietary and damaging products," the SFC argues.

In true community fashion, the campaign offers various resources and support forums for developers and teams working to transition away from GitHub for morality's sake.