[stingraycharles]

I think you underestimate just how careful “real” businesses are when it comes to violating the (copyright) law. Any legal advisor at any corp will strongly advice against using code that’s generated like this, until there is clear legal precedent that it’s OK to do this.

[hnfong]

Does that involve a ban of stackoverflow use as well?

https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

I don't think I've heard anyone warn people not to copy code snippets from stackoverflow due to licensing issues, although "real" businesses should be rightfully concerned.

[gkbrk]

It's already a common practice to put a StackOverflow link as a comment when you copy code from them. It provides valuable context to future readers.

That's probably enough for attribution, but I suppose one could copy the author name as well.

[serial_dev]

I think you underestimate how easy it is for developers to disregard what the Corp lawyer said about AI code gen tools.

Manager: "we asked, legal says you can't use copilot", dev: "okay, so from now on, I'll not discuss how I use copilot and will remember to disable it when someone sees me working, gotcha".

I'm not saying everyone will do this, I'm saying some people will know that the corp doesn't always have a way to verify how the code was written, and they will think that a lawsuit cannot really happen to them.

[Filligree]

> Manager: "we asked, legal says you can't use copilot", dev: "okay, so from now on, I'll not discuss how I use copilot and will remember to disable it when someone sees me working, gotcha".

Manager: "Everyone else is running through their feature list faster than you. What gives? Remember, you're not allowed to use Copilot."

IC: "I'm not using Copilot."

Manager: "Remember, you're not allowed to use Copilot."

[formerly_proven]

Doesn't Microsoft already use Copilot internally?

[robocat]

Of course if only used on internal software that isn’t distributed, then copying GPL code is fine. Until a developer inadvertently distributes it or copies code from one place to another…

[sublimefire]

Yep they do, but I did not see anyone generating chunks of gpl'd .NET code yet.

[pc86]

Microsoft puts out a lot of non-.NET code, including internally.

[sroussey]

True, and that will cause a departure between companies large enough to worry, and all the startups that don’t.