Although any forks will continue to persist on GitHub, so your old code will still be available to copilot, I guess, which kind of makes the whole not mirroring to GitHub a bit less impactful.
I find that migrating from GitHub is the easy, if somewhat annoying part. A bigger problem for a small project is that no hosted CI service offer free-of-charge (or any) CI unless your repository is on GitHub or GitLab.
SourceHut offers its own CI service. It’s paid, but you can get it for free if you can’t afford to pay. (And since everything is modularized, you can even use SourceHut’s CI service without using it for code hosting, which several projects do.)
That said, I have been using it on my sourcehut-hosted repos and it’s absolutely fantastic. The UI loads in an instant even on old computers. I’ve also tried out the beta one for codeberg, and while it’s passable (and it’ll probably still improve a lot in the future) the sourcehut one is much smoother.
It’s dropping built-in support, but you can still start a CI build with just one HTTP request, and there are third-party systems that bridge it to GitHub (e.g. https://sr.ht/~emersion/hottub/, linked in that blog post)
The main drawback is if I want to submit a pull request to a repository on GitHub
This is a bigger issue than most people talk about (not just a GitHub problem). Unless the maintainer explicitly gives a mailing list or email, there’s no way to submit patches if you don’t want an account which forces people to stay. Be it traditional with email or experimental with Fediforge, keeping it distributed and non-proprietary will be important in the long term.
Cakelisp doesn’t contain any patented or extremely special code, plus it’s open source. The case against CoPilot in this case is not that strong IMO.
If you want to self-host your repo, go ahead. But don’t make it a case against CoPilot just because some (probably trivial) code can be sent to Microsoft
I can’t speak for the author, but I don’t think the concern is “oh no, copilot will use this specific code in ways I don’t like”; it’s more “microsoft has shown a consistent non-stop refusal to even try to understand the concept of consent, and by using their products, I appear to be endorsing or at least tolerating their behavior”.
Cakelisp is GPLv3. Microsoft is violating its copyright. “It’s open source” does not mean you can do anything with it, you need to follow the license. I would say the case against Copilot is extremely strong.
Software Freedom Conservancy published why Copilot is problematic in its Give Up GitHub! campaign.
I suggested removing the
lisptag, as there is nothing specific to Lisp or Cakelisp in there.Although any forks will continue to persist on GitHub, so your old code will still be available to copilot, I guess, which kind of makes the whole not mirroring to GitHub a bit less impactful.
I find that migrating from GitHub is the easy, if somewhat annoying part. A bigger problem for a small project is that no hosted CI service offer free-of-charge (or any) CI unless your repository is on GitHub or GitLab.
SourceHut offers its own CI service. It’s paid, but you can get it for free if you can’t afford to pay. (And since everything is modularized, you can even use SourceHut’s CI service without using it for code hosting, which several projects do.)
Sourcehut is dropping support for using builds.sr.ht with non-sourcehut repositories: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2022-08-01-dispatch-deprecation-plans/
That said, I have been using it on my sourcehut-hosted repos and it’s absolutely fantastic. The UI loads in an instant even on old computers. I’ve also tried out the beta one for codeberg, and while it’s passable (and it’ll probably still improve a lot in the future) the sourcehut one is much smoother.
It’s dropping built-in support, but you can still start a CI build with just one HTTP request, and there are third-party systems that bridge it to GitHub (e.g. https://sr.ht/~emersion/hottub/, linked in that blog post)
Codeberg is likely going to provide CI, it’s in closed beta at the moment.
This is a bigger issue than most people talk about (not just a GitHub problem). Unless the maintainer explicitly gives a mailing list or email, there’s no way to submit patches if you don’t want an account which forces people to stay. Be it traditional with email or experimental with Fediforge, keeping it distributed and non-proprietary will be important in the long term.
Cakelisp doesn’t contain any patented or extremely special code, plus it’s open source. The case against CoPilot in this case is not that strong IMO.
If you want to self-host your repo, go ahead. But don’t make it a case against CoPilot just because some (probably trivial) code can be sent to Microsoft
I can’t speak for the author, but I don’t think the concern is “oh no, copilot will use this specific code in ways I don’t like”; it’s more “microsoft has shown a consistent non-stop refusal to even try to understand the concept of consent, and by using their products, I appear to be endorsing or at least tolerating their behavior”.
And still, it’s a drop in the ocean. It would probably do more harm than good to Cakelisp
Each one drops the idea in someone else’s mind, until there’s a whole wave.
I moved my lisp compiler off Github over a year ago and I have zero regrets. The community is thriving.
Monopolies are bad.
Cakelisp is GPLv3. Microsoft is violating its copyright. “It’s open source” does not mean you can do anything with it, you need to follow the license. I would say the case against Copilot is extremely strong.
Software Freedom Conservancy published why Copilot is problematic in its Give Up GitHub! campaign.