[batmanturkey]

It’s a net harm for the programmers whose code is being willfully plagiarized.

It’s a net boon for Microsoft in their efforts to rule the world.

It’s a net loss for society and ethics.

Open up copilot code, Microsoft, if you are so sure that everyone must wear transparent underwear let’s see you wearing some. Train copilot on windows 11 code. It’s not public domain.

Truth matters. Lies matter

[onethought]

Expand on the unethical part. So people published code that could be referenced and copied on GitHub. There was no ethical problem, the world, society were happy.

Github make a convenient way to search and contextualise this publicly available code and paste it into your code (adjusting local scope, format, language along the way). Suddenly we have crossed an ethical line!?

Which ethical line? Are you pretending people never copy and pasted open source code before copilot? Are you pretending open source code never copy and pasted other open source code? That we were in an ethically pure world until copilot came along?

[shuger]

> So people published code that could be referenced and copied on GitHub. There was no ethical problem, the world, society were happy.

This code has different licenses. You can't just copy code randomly without checking license first.

Copilot serves it stripped of the license to unaware users. Even if copilot user wants only to reuse code licensed in a way that allows it copilot will serve him code from restrictive licenses without him being aware.

[onethought]

You can just copy and paste code without checking the license. People do it all the time.

GitHub doesn’t force you to accept the license in the repository before showing you the code.

[concordDance]

> It’s a net harm for the programmers whose code is being willfully plagiarized.

What's the harm, specifically?

Say it copies that snippet of workflow scheduling code I made at work yesterday or the greasemonkey script I made in my own time.

How is my life worse?