It's really weird for software engineers to judge something by its current state and not by its potential state.
To me, it's clearly solvable by Copilot filtering the input code by that repository's license. It should only be certain open source licenses, maybe even user-choosable, or code-creators can optionally sublicense their code to Copilot in a very permissable way.
Secondly, a way for the crowd to code review suggestions would be a start.
Writing to overall goals and debugging actual behavior are the real work of programmers. Coming up with syntax or algorithms are 3rd and 4th on the priority list because, lets face it, it's not that hard to find a reference for correct syntax or the overall recipe implied by an algorithm. Once you understand those, you can write the correct code for your project.
I do think Copilot has potential as a search engine and reference tool -- if it can be presented that way. But the idea of a computer actually coming up with the right code in the full context of the program seems like fantasy.
Don't tell me what to do, tell me what not to do. "this line doesn't look like something that belongs in a code base", "this looks like a line of code that will be changed before the PR is merged". Etc.
No, we're not afraid of Copilot replacing us. The thought is ridiculous, anyway. If it actually worked, we would be enabled to work in higher abstractions. We'd end up in even higher demand because the output of a single engineer would be so great that even small businesses would be able to afford us.
Yes, we are afraid of Copilot making the entire industry worse, the same way that "low-code" and "no-code" solutions have enabled generations of novices to produce volumes of garbage that we eventually have to clean up.
I’m saying copilot can be better with very simple tweaks
Of course this would be massive, so from a practical consideration the attribution file that Copilot generates in the local repository would have to just link to the full file, but I don't think that would be an issue in and of itself.
Almost certainly a link would not suffice, basically every license requires that the attribution be directly included with the modified material. Links can rot, can be inaccessible if you don't have internet access, can change out from underneath you, etc.
(I am not a lawyer, btw)