Post Syndicated from original https://lwn.net/Articles/914150/

The GitHub Copilot
offering claims to assist software developers through the application of
machine-learning techniques. Since its inception, Copilot has been
followed by controversies, mostly based on
the extensive use of free software to train the machine-learning engine. The announcement of a
class-action lawsuit against Copilot was thus unsurprising. The lawsuit
raises all of the expected licensing questions and more;
while some in our
community have welcomed this attack against Copilot,
it is not clear that this action will lead to good results.