How are multiple Copilot licenses handled?

[matrumz]

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I have an Individual license for GitHub Copilot for my account.

At my company, we use our personal accounts, which are authorized with the company's GitHub Organization, to work in the company's repositories.

How will individuals, who have an Individual license like myself, manage their licenses if we're given Copilot for Business licenses?

[davecheney]

There can only be one copilot licence active per github account. If your employer takes out a Copilot for Business subscription and assigns you a Copilot seat from their account it will refund your CfI subscription.

The details of how or what you're allowed to use your employer provided CfB Copilot seat are a matter for you and your employer to discuss.

[mjmikulski]

@davecheney
The accepted answer is not correct.

I have a corporate copilot, my copilot settings pages says "GitHub Copilot Business is active for your account".

On the same time I have been just charged for private copilot, while I cannot actually use it (there is no way to switch between licenses and the corporate license overrides my private license).

[yshavit]

This answer is in opposition to GitHub's recommendation at this page:

If you aren't required to use a managed user account, GitHub recommends that you use one personal account for all your work on GitHub.com. With a single personal account, you can contribute to a combination of personal, open source, or professional projects using one identity.

As others have noted, both SSO issues and ownership issues make this recommendation very problematic for copilot. Until now, things have worked fine: I just don't authorize my corporate SSO when I log into my account on my personal laptop, and all the non-corporate features just don't get authorized. But with this implementation of Copilot, that means (a) I'm locked out of using Copilot on my personal projects, and (b) I don't know what's going on "under the hood", and whether my personal project is being trained on the corporate account. My personal project happens to be open source, so it's fine -- but if it weren't, there'd be serious issues. And it'd be even worse if I were a consultant!

This is a pretty significant breach of trust, imo.

Is there a publicly-visible ticket to track a feature enhancement to allow multiple licenses? If so, I'd like to follow it, so that I can learn when/if I can start using Copilot on my home laptop.

[twojnarowski]

I've done some very basic tests, and here is what I found: Copilot extension in VS doesn't know about any repos on Github. It only is aware of files in current solution. And the Copilot on github.com, is only aware of currently opened repo.
What I mean is that ask Copilot in VS about anything related to other repos in your organization - it won't know anything.
And second test - open Copilot chat on github.com while you have your personal project open and ask it about your organization's repos - it won't be aware of their existance. Then without closing the chat window, go to one of your organizations repos and ask again the same question, and it will suddenly be aware of it.
So with these crude tests it seems, that there is no security threat about mixing personal/professional stuff. As far as I can see, I could use my enterprise organization Copilot on my private personal projects and no one will ever even know about it. I can also open a solution from a second organization where I have another enterprise Copilot license, and it won't leak any knowledge about Organization A repos to my opened Organization B repo. Because VS copilot doesn't even use github.com and all repos you have access to.

But that's just my opinion based on basic tests. It would be good to get an official answer if that's really the case and one GH account with Copilot can be used for multiple Coplilot licensed organizations without any leaks between them.

[mjmikulski]

and no one will ever even know about it.

I wouldn't be so sure. Corporates usually have some insights about the tool they pay for. So I guess they can check it.

[BenjamenMeyer]

As far as I can see, I could use my enterprise organization Copilot on my private personal projects and no one will ever even know about it.

Orgs usually have tracking. I have a Business license and am thinking of purchasing a business license for my start-up as I've found it beneficial. I know my employer that gave me the license is able to track usage since if we don't use it they'll claw back the license for others to use. However, breaking this could be a contract violation and breach of duty since part of the work agreement for many employers require a clean separation of time and resources for these kinds of things.

Keep in mind, the primary purpose of the license from the business perspective is one of liability here. If you use it outside the business that assigned the license then you may find that the use might not get covered properly if liability became an issue.

[wy8162]

Question: for the same GitHub user name, could I use personal license in my personal computer and use the company license in company computer?

[davecheney]

That is not currently possible. Each GitHub username can have at most one GitHub Copilot subscription.

[flash-me]

@davecheney And don't you think this would be an awesome information that should be mentioned in the documentation? 🫡

cheers
flash ⚡

[tcashel]

@davecheney I ran into this issue as well, My personal CoPilot was canceled and refunded and the Organization License superseded it with no warning or questions asked. Now am stuck not using CoPolot on personal and side projects because my SSO provider cannot disassociate my github account from my organization email, which is not a GitHub problem but a is a situation I would not be in if I could have two licenses.

I would like to pay for a personal copilot license for my personal and side projects, it creates a question of visibility and ownership if anything were to come from a personal project.

I am in a situation where I cannot use Copilot on my personal github account if I join my organization, what happens If I join two organizations that have Copliot licenses(I have not done it but plan to)?

[twojnarowski]

I have mentioned that on VS support: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Copilot-running-on-different-accounts-an/10798198
And it would seem that maybe something will change, because it is weird for me that VS doesn't even allow me to quickly disable Copilot, and I just have to open any private file and start writing a comment and already all my private data is going through my Employers tool. And in the same way, the copilot will use knowledge of the repos of my employer and leak them into my private code.

[kojiromike]

My user experience from this was that one day I was routinely using Copilot in immersive mode on github.com. Then I joined an org and suddenly Copilot was disabled. I learned that org had a Copilot Business subscription, but had inadvertently disabled "Copilot in GitHub.com".

I couldn't even use it in relation to private repos and those of other orgs. I left the offending org and re-established my personal Copilot config, but many users won't have that option.

Also, what happens if I'm a member of two orgs that have GitHub Copilot Business or Enterprise and have conflicting configurations? Which one will win? This is definitely not answered by "There can only be one copilot licence active per github account."

[BenjamenMeyer]

Which one will win?

They defined it as the stricter configuration wins out. So for your example, you'd probably end up with the strictest settings of all the orgs you belong to.