Maybe you don’t mind if GitHub Copi­lot used your open-source code with­out ask­ing.
But how will you feel if Copi­lot erases your open-source com­mu­nity?

Hello. This is Matthew Butterick. I’m a writer, designer, pro­gram­mer, and law­yer. I’ve writ­ten two books on typog­ra­phy—Prac­ti­cal Typog­ra­phy and Typog­ra­phy for Lawyers—and designed the fonts in the MB Type library, includ­ing Equity, Con­course, and Trip­li­cate.

As a pro­gram­mer, I’ve been pro­fes­sion­ally involved with open-source soft­ware since 1998, includ­ing two years at Red Hat. More recently I’ve been a con­trib­u­tor to Racket. I wrote the Lisp-advo­cacy essay Why Racket? Why Lisp? and Beau­ti­ful Racket, a book about mak­ing pro­gram­ming lan­guages. I’ve released plenty of open-source soft­ware, includ­ing Pollen, which I use to pub­lish my online books, and even AI soft­ware that I use in my work.

In June 2022, I wrote about the legal prob­lems with GitHub Copi­lot, in par­tic­u­lar its mis­han­dling of open-source licenses. Recently, I took the next step: I reac­ti­vated my Cal­i­for­nia bar mem­ber­ship to team up with the amaz­ingly excel­lent class-action lit­i­ga­tors Joseph Saveri, Cadio Zir­poli, and Travis Man­fredi at the Joseph Saveri Law Firm on a new project—

We’re inves­ti­gat­ing a poten­tial law­suit against GitHub Copi­lot for vio­lat­ing its legal duties to open-source authors and end users.

We want to hear from you. Click here to help with the inves­ti­ga­tion.
Or read on.

Read in full here:

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