Group: Copilot Watch Group

Group:Copilot Watch Group en en

About

An FSF + community group / wiki page to document developments in the Microsoft GitHub Copilot project and AI pair-programming generally.

Past events:

• 2022-03-03 - Copilot IRC Q&A with Robert F.J. Seddon https://www.fsf.org/events/copilot-irc-q-a-with-robert-f-j-seddon

• 2022-03-07 - FSF moderated general IRC discussion on the papers selected from Copilot call for whitepapers https://www.fsf.org/events/join-us-for-a-general-irc-discussion-on-the-papers-selected-as-part-of-our-copilot-call-for-whitepapers

Ongoing:

• Libreplanet-discuss discussion: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2022-02/msg00066.html

• ai-assist discussion on copyleft.org mailing list

• There are discussions of the copilot papers in the FSF member forum, which is private to FSF members, joining costs money. The introductory blog post has more information about the forum.

• Research on this wiki: Please see Group:Copilot_Watch_Group/Research for a public-facing and evolving collection of research materials and preliminary conclusions. Please feel free to participate!

Related articles

• Developments in the FOSS response to Copilot and related technologies - lwn.net
• GitHub Copilot - ycombinator.com
• Publication of the FSF-funded white papers on questions around Copilot - reddit
• Hacker news on the papers
• Saveri Copilot litigation

Timeline

• 2022-02-24 - Publication of the FSF-funded white papers on questions around Copilot announced today! Read the papers and find advocacy-oriented events. Read the announcement at https://www.fsf.org/news/publication-of-the-fsf-funded-white-papers-on-questions-around-copilot

• 2022-02-23 - SFC: New Committee Will Investigate Copyleft Implications of AI-Assisted Programming https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/feb/23/committee-ai-assisted-software-github-copilot/, including a mailing list for discussion.

• 2022-02-03 - Bradley M. Kuhn essay about copilot https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/feb/03/github-copilot-copyleft-gpl/ (also published as part of FSF's call for whitepapers).

• 2021-08 - Paper: "Asleep at the Keyboard? Assessing the Security of GitHub Copilot's Code Contributions", finds that security vulnerabilities are very common in copilot generated code https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.09293

• 2021-07-28 - FSF-funded call for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot. It identifies some important issues and ideas https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-funded-call-for-white-papers-on-philosophical-and-legal-questions-around-copilot

• 2021-07-14 - OpenAI's paper about the copilot machine learning model they created: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.03374

This page was a featured resource in March 2022.