In June 2022, the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) announced it would stop using GitHub itself and help free and open-source software (FOSS) projects plan migrations away. It urged developers more broadly to leave the platform, citing concerns about GitHub Copilot and dependence on proprietary development infrastructure. SFC did not order existing member projects to move immediately.
What SFC announced—and when
SFC published “Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!” on June 30, 2022. The matching Linuxiac report followed on July 4, 2022. The announcement was an advocacy campaign, not a new Microsoft or GitHub policy announcement.
Bradley M. Kühn and Denver Gingerich wrote for SFC: “Today, we take a stronger stance. We are ending all our own uses of GitHub, and announcing a long-term plan to assist FOSS projects to migrate away from GitHub.” SFC said it would begin a long-term effort to help projects move, while calling on FOSS developers generally to leave GitHub. SFC’s June 30 announcement is the primary account of its position.
What SFC said about Copilot
SFC tied the timing of its announcement to its dispute with Microsoft and GitHub over Copilot, a code-writing assistant. SFC said it had raised questions for roughly a year without receiving answers it considered adequate. Those questions concerned the legal basis for public claims about training models on public data and ownership of outputs; why FOSS code was used for training rather than Microsoft’s proprietary code; and which repositories and licenses were included.
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These are SFC’s stated concerns and questions, not legal findings established by the cited accounts. The materials cited here do not establish that a court or regulator resolved the issues. Linuxiac’s contemporaneous description characterized Copilot as trained on publicly available source code; claims about training data, licensing, and legal consequences should be understood as attributed claims rather than settled conclusions.
Was SFC requiring every member project to leave?
No. SFC said it would not immediately compel existing member projects to migrate. Its announced policy was that new member projects would need a long-term plan to migrate away from GitHub. That distinction matters: the campaign urged a broad departure, but its stated membership requirement was prospective and planned rather than an immediate order to current members.
Why the campaign went beyond Copilot
SFC’s argument also addressed dependence on proprietary development infrastructure. In its view, reliance on a platform controlled by a commercial company creates a broader concern for FOSS communities, apart from the specific questions it raised about Copilot. The announcement therefore combined a response to the Copilot dispute with a call to reduce reliance on GitHub.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What this 2022 story does—and does not—establish
The announcement documents what SFC said it would do in June 2022. It does not establish the present status of SFC’s migration work, identify which projects subsequently moved, or compare today’s hosting services. Nor does it show that SFC endorsed a particular alternative provider. A project assessing a move would need current information about repository and issue or wiki portability, collaboration features, hosting and governance, operational burden, and its own requirements; this announcement alone cannot answer which service is best.
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