GitHub's four sins "provoking public anger"? SFC issued a document "Give Up GitHub! 》Calls on the whole network to condemn

A few days ago, a news about "GitHub's artificial intelligence programming tool Copilot officially launched at a cost of 67 yuan/month" caused a heated discussion in the open source circle. Controversial topics such as “change to pay” have been dug up again and continue to ferment on social media.

[Related reading: Github AI programming tool Copilot is officially launched, the era of "white prostitution" is over, 67 yuan/month! https://segmentfault.com/a/1190000042024352 ]

On June 30, the official website of the Society for the Protection of Software Freedom (SFC) released an article entitled "Give Up GitHub! ", completely "ignited" the long-standing "anger" in the open source circle.

In a long article, the SFC said: Due to GitHub's misconduct, the SFC will end all use of GitHub and will assist other free software projects to migrate from GitHub - "We begin to call on all free and open source software developers to abandon GitHub."

At present, SFC has stopped using GitHub for project hosting, and urged other software developers to quit together.

Why give up on GitHub? The Four Deadly Sins "Provoked Public Outrage"

It turned out that SFC had questioned the legality of GitHub Copilot (AI programming tool) training on public code, but GitHub has always refused to respond. Therefore, as soon as the news that GitHub just announced that Copilot was officially launched and charged a few days ago came out, SFC was completely "angry".

The SFC said that there are many reasons for calling to abandon GitHub. Here, they list some of GitHub's most important sins.

(1) Legal issues: involving privacy, plagiarizing code, ignoring the license

As we all know, Copilot is a for-profit product developed and sold by Microsoft and its GitHub subsidiary that uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology to automatically generate code for developer interactions. According to GitHub's own statement, the AI model was only trained using projects hosted on GitHub, including many under copyleft licenses.

[Related reading: Free Software Foundation Approves GitHub Copilot: "Unacceptable and Unjust" https://segmentfault.com/a/1190000040452902 ]

Here comes the problem, since most of these projects are not in the "public domain", they are licensed under the FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) license. So these license requirements include proper author attribution, and in the case of copyright licenses, they sometimes require that works based on or containing software be licensed under the same copyright license as the previous work.

Microsoft and GitHub have reportedly ignored these licensing requirements in recent years. Their only "defense" of these actions was the former CEO's tweet, in which he falsely claimed that the pending law on the topic had actually been resolved.

(2) Ethical issues: using FOSS projects to specialize for profit

Legal issues aside, there are serious ethical ramifications for GitHub's choice to use copyrighted code in services that create proprietary software.

In 2020, the community discovered that GitHub had a for-profit software service contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Activists, including some GitHub employees, have been calling for GitHub to cancel the contract for two years. GitHub responded that their parent company, Microsoft, had been selling Microsoft Word to ICE for years without any public complaints.

They claim that, in part, justifies more business with institutions with questionable policies. "Regardless of your views on ICE and its actions, GitHub's continued dismissive and hypocritical response to activists raising this important issue demonstrates that GitHub puts its profits above community concerns."

(3) Pretend to support FOSS, but in fact "encircle" the community to rely on its proprietary software

The SFC also said that while GitHub pretends to support FOSS, their entire hosting site is itself proprietary or trade secret software. We appreciate that GitHub allows some of its employees to sometimes provide free and open source software to upstream projects, but our community has repeatedly been "besieged" by the company that claims to support FOSS, while actively "persuading" the community to rely on its proprietary software. "We won't let GitHub 'kill' us the same way!"

GitHub is different from most of its peers in the FOSS project hosting industry because GitHub doesn't even offer any self-hosted FOSS options, their entire codebase is private. For example, while we're not happy with the business model of GitLab's parallel "community" and "enterprise" editions, at least the community edition of GitLab offers basic self-hosted functionality and is 100 percent FOSS.

(4) "Escape" copyright: slander copyleft, attack GPL license

Additionally, GitHub has long tried to attack copyleft and the GPL in order to convince projects to "escape" copyright retention issues.

The SFC revealed that GitHub has long tried to discredit copyleft. “Their various CEOs often denounce copyleft out loud, for example in a keynote bashing copyleft and the GPL. Over the years, we have personally observed multiple GitHub employees arguing in many venues...we even saw GitHub employees Do this directly in the bug ticket".

Meanwhile, GitHub executives have attacked copyleft licensing several times in the past. The above incidents have made GitHub's impression in the industry worse.

How to give up on GitHub? Key FOSS project developer groups should "lead by example"

Of course, for the entire open source community, it's really hard to leave GitHub right away, and one of the reasons for that is "proprietary vendor lock-in."

We know that, as the "Facebook of software development", GitHub has already managed to create the most engaging and exciting playground ever for FOSS developers. Leaving GitHub is difficult because that's how you find and work with co-developers. GitHub might even be your way of showing your work to potential employers when you look for a job, and some computer science courses even require students to use GitHub.

Since it's so difficult to leave GitHub, how exactly do you let it go ?

Here, the SFC is first calling on the most comfortable group of developers—leaders of key FOSS projects, recruiting and engineering managers, and developers with job security—to take the first step by rejecting GitHub’s proprietary services.

As such, SFC certainly knows that new developers in the above fields will be under pressure from potential employers to participate in GitHub. "But collective action is precisely the test of the privileged developers among us to lead by example, which is why not only are we asking you to leave GitHub, but we're leading efforts to help everyone abandon GitHub in the long-term."

By setting the agenda for FOSS projects and hosting projects elsewhere, key developer groups can help newcomers avoid the inherent power imbalance that GitHub creates.

So SFC starts by speaking out to hiring managers, community leaders, and others who have the power to encourage new contributors and existing communities to use GitHub. Once powerful figures choose to host projects on GitHub, individual contributors have no choice but to use these proprietary and disruptive products.

"If you make decisions or have political power within your community and/or your employer, we urge you to use your power to centralize community work through a free and open source software platform rather than GitHub. If you are someone who feels powerless to leave GitHub Individual contributors, please read the (growing) list of suggestions on how to take your first steps."

The SFC said that in the long run they will develop this stable URL (GiveUpGitHub.org) with links to resources to help everyone - from the most privileged developers to the representatives of free and open source software Newbies and members of underserved groups - give up on GitHub.

If you feel that you or your project can't leave GitHub just yet, the SFC asks you to share your concerns about GitHub with your users by raising awareness by adding this section to the README. If you're ready to leave GitHub, you can use this README.

follow-up

It is reported that SFC will not force existing members to migrate projects for the time being, but they will no longer accept new member projects that do not plan to migrate from GitHub.

The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), founded in 2006, is a non-profit organization that promotes open source software and defends the General Public License (GPL) of free software. It aims to provide support and infrastructure for free and open source software projects. .

The SFC had previously sued US TV maker Vizio over GPL abuse. This time, SFC reissued "Give Up GitHub! ” condemned GitHub, revealed its “false face”, and called on the industry to resist its deprecation and ensure a free and open open source software environment for the benefit of the broad developer community.

At present, this article by SFC is still hotly debated on social media. Some netizens expressed their support for SFC's question about the copyright laws and regulations involved in GitHub Copilot. At the same time, some netizens expressed their understanding of the commercialization of Copilot. More people join the debate.

We will continue to pay attention to this event. If you have any views on this event, you are also welcome to leave a message and interact in the comments.

Reference link: https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/