Microsoft Copilot is an abuse of open source. It is perhaps the greatest theft of intellectual property in human history.
We should do everything we can to defeat it.
That said, here is my Request For Comments regarding a slightly modified BSD 2-Clause License explicitly prohibiting Copilot-style use:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33458374
We need to do everything we can to defend open source software against Microsoft and the like.
What it's functionally doing is incredibly valuable and I want to see it succeed. Figuring out how to navigate licensing effectively is an important step, but as someone who writes open source, I am happy my code is helping potentially make other people's code better too.
"GitHub Copilot is powered by OpenAI Codex, a new AI system created by OpenAI. It has been trained on a selection of English language and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub."
It would be like if J. K. Rowling went to war over the fact that I lifted a few paragraphs from Harry Potter and used them in an entirely different book.
Also this is entirely anecdata, but at my company I'd say we have about a dozen other engineers actively using copilot and not a single one of them has an issue with it. (ideological or otherwise)
Not dramatized, evil is the correct word to describe many pf their practices.
Unfortunately you can't pick and choose what copilot is being used for.
For example, it is a wonderful tool in cutting down the time needed to generate/write tests in TDD but how do you differentiate that between large chunks of proprietary code that it may spit out.
It has some benefits, but far more downsides, and Microsoft and its people in management have a history of being very evil in the truest sense of the word.
A lot of people see that as a trigger word instead and can't recognize it for what it is. What's that say about society when a majority can't recognize evil...
Take a look at the Chilton's Manuals, all the publishers were bought up and now its paywalled for a subscription, consists only of steps and procedures (know-how) so you can repair your own vehicles. That shouldn't be copyrighted.