How come? When people contributed code publicly they attached a license how the code may be used. Is training an AI model on this allowed? I think there's a fair, important and novel legal question to be examined here.

Patent trolls usually file lawsuits that are just unmerited, but rely simply on the fact that mounting a defence is more expensive than settling.

In both cases, large company (the troll/Microsoft) is profiting and smaller subjects or individuals (real inventors/code authors) are losing.

But with patent trolls, large company is suing, while in this case, large company is being sued.

So it's the opposite, and I wish Microsoft loses.

(Note this is between Microsoft and code authors. The people who use copilot don't have a say there, as it's not their code being ingested)

Yes but this time it is about the is-even() function I have written in 2012 so they are right! /s

Snark aside, I do agree with you. For me the most surprising thing is really the amount of people siding with them on HN...

It is a little different. The first patent troll that blazed the trail gets both more credit (for ingenuity) and blame (for the deleterious impact) in my opinion. I'll give the same internet points to these guys.