Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

Re:Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse? by dgb23 on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @05:19AM (#27891555)

> We can't reasonably claim there's anything wrong with a company building a product on the back of open source work when literally all of us do that as well.

We cannot (are not allowed to, by law, contracts etc.) open source everything we write. I think the most important contribution is not funding but to contribute in some way or another for most.

Having said that, it is disheartening that important projects lack even basic funding. Is this getting better? There are also success stories that pop up with funding and donations becoming easier.

For companies open source funding can be a major thing to improve their relationship with the wider software community. It is a signal that they are interested in sustainability of software and collaboration. And it is a form of recognition for the authors.

Edit:

I just realized we are talking about GitHub here. They are a major contributor to open and free software as they provide free hosting and tooling. I'm not saying this absolves them of everything they do with Copilot, but I'm very, very happy to have such an amazing service freely available and many others are too.

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Re:Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse? by benatkin on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @09:08AM (#27893238)

GitHub isn't good for Open Source in my opinion. Debian is right to use their own GitLab instance. Lots of things seem good in the short term and are bad in the long term.

Edit: I don't really know what things would be like without GitHub. Same with YouTube and Facebook. I don't assume any of these have a net positive impact, though.

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