> But I'm perfectly happy with GitHub and I'm fine if their ML thingy makes money off my code, I get free actions runners, a nice UI, pull-requests, etc, into the bargain, not bad.
As an indivdual you can certainly think so. But as a community we must balance how much advantages do we get from GitHub versus how much advantages it gets from us.
Considering that GitHub will probably make millions with copilot, then it is fair to say that a big part of that success comes from the quality of the code we collectively put one. Therefore, money should be shared. And the first thing to do is to ask Microsoft : how much money do you make on us ? And the only possible way to get an honest answer is to make sure the management of GitHub is done jointly by MSFT and the community.
I don't think this is going to happen anytime soon. So I'm seriously considering getting out.
Isn't this sort of the expectation of these free services? They provide a service to you for free, and in exchange they are able to collect data from you, store it in a database, and do things with it.
I fully expected GitHub to do something like this (minus Enterprise repos that pay big money), and it's why I stopped using them. I instead use gitbucket, which is a free and open source self hosted thing.
I also expect GitLab to do something similar. It is as they say in the crypto world.
Not your wallet, not your crypto.
Not your source control server? Not your code. Legally? Might be, but that doesn't matter. Do you have lawyers?
But I have written code which is hosted on GitHub which other people have uploaded and I have signed no agreement to let them do so. Does this mean all open source projects older than GitHub need to stop using it?
> If the code had a license that forbid reupload you could ask GitHub to remove it.
Licenses don't need to forbid re-upload generally to be incompatible with GitHub. Given that uploading to GitHub, according to someone quoted on page 1 of this discussion, grants GitHub the right to use that code to "improve their service" (whatever that means -- maybe Copilot?), not explicitly granting that right to them, or the right for someone else to grant it to them, is enough to make them not allow uploading to GitHub.
So that should be more like: "If the code had a license that didn't specifically allow Microsoft to use it to 'improve the GitHub service' you could order GitHub to remove it."
Sure they're going to make more money from me (as a generic user) than value I will derive from them (on average over the population of users). Otherwise they go out of business and we use other available alternatives.
But you know what? Even after copilot my code is still there, for people to make money from (as both GH and random people already do), to learn from, to cut up and rehash, to reference, to write (much) better versions of, to generally advance humanity. I know this is the root philosophical conflict between free software and open source but I wanted to state my view since this is a call to action and we'll be seen as betraying some ideal for failing to comply.
As an indivdual you can certainly think so. But as a community we must balance how much advantages do we get from GitHub versus how much advantages it gets from us.
Considering that GitHub will probably make millions with copilot, then it is fair to say that a big part of that success comes from the quality of the code we collectively put one. Therefore, money should be shared. And the first thing to do is to ask Microsoft : how much money do you make on us ? And the only possible way to get an honest answer is to make sure the management of GitHub is done jointly by MSFT and the community.
I don't think this is going to happen anytime soon. So I'm seriously considering getting out.