company

GitHub

Developer-platform subsidiary of Microsoft, central code-hosting and collaboration service for open source. Notable controversies include the ICE contract employee petitions (2019-2020), Copilot copyright lawsuits over training-data use, and content-moderation decisions on activist repositories.

Related Entities

Acquired by Microsoft since Oct 26, 2018

Track Record

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GitHub, Microsoft and OpenAI sued in class action over Copilot allegedly reproducing open-source code without license compliance

Nov 3, 2022

On November 3, 2022 developer-attorney Matthew Butterick filed a proposed class action against GitHub, Microsoft and OpenAI alleging that GitHub Copilot reproduces verbatim or near-verbatim snippets of open-source code without preserving the original license, author attribution, or copyright notices required by permissive licenses such as MIT, Apache and GPL. The Northern District of California allowed two contract-related claims to proceed in 2024 while dismissing some DMCA claims. The case remains a flagship test of fair-use limits in code-trained generative AI.

- Intellectual Property Ethics - Open Source Licensing Integrity - Creator Compensation

Sources: Ars Technica

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GitHub kept ICE contract after employee open letter and several engineer resignations

Oct 9, 2019

In October 2019 more than 200 GitHub employees signed an open letter calling on the company to terminate its $200,000 contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). At least five engineers publicly resigned in protest. CEO Nat Friedman defended the contract by saying GitHub products were 'general-purpose developer tools' and the company would not cancel the contract, while pledging $500,000 in donations to immigrant-rights organizations. The contract has been renewed each year since.

- Immigration Openness - Government Ethics & Anti-Corruption - Tech Worker Organizing

Sources: The Verge