It totally does break licencing laws, just because Americans think they can change the terms of an agreement and relicense your code because you didn't remove it doesn't make that legal.
It's a completely closed system and they refuse to let you know what they used as source, so you will never know which is the problem raised by the fine article included Microsoft's refusal to engage.
The premise is completely unfounded. If I read the Windows source code and then went to recreate Windows functionality in Wine Microsoft would completely sue the crap out of everyone even if I didn't copy/paste Windows code. Why should we give Microsoft leeway?
Even Amazon lets you understand what licences went into the code you are copy/pasting.
the issue is if GitHub hosts your code with an open source license that does not allow for-profit reuse without concomitant sharing, like the GPL, they will incorporate that code into their product in violation of the license, and claim the license doesn’t apply because the code isn’t code but merely text.
they built their business on precise and detailed articulations of consent and its boundaries, but disregarded all of that, post-acquisition, because Microsoft has enough lawyers that they think they can get away with it.
so, for the subcommunities and creators who put their work on GitHub in the context of these very specific and fine-grained articulations of consent, this may be theft and is certainly betrayal.
I'm grateful for experiments like Copilot and replit's[0] "generate and explain." Maybe there are issues with software licenses and "ai assistants," but the way to surface the issues is with working software. I don't think this is a case of "move fast and break things." It's always been possible to abuse open source licenses without "ai."
There are plenty of alternatives to GitHub if you don't like it. There's no need for the hypercritical tone in this piece.
[0] https://twitter.com/tylerangert/status/1540013772693245958