They took my work, removed my name and trained an advanced pattern matching technique to try to make code like mine and then sell it. It’s so obviously ethically questionable it’s insane.
Developers are absolutely pissed about this, and rightfully so.
The best question to ask yourself is if you would be annoyed as much if a company like Black Duck did a similar training or analysis with their OpenHub (openhub.net)?
I think one could even make a case for training an AI in this manner from the leaked Windows code: copyright law treats these generally as "fair use", though how you gained the copy of the code might still be illegal.
IANAL though :)
Copilot doesn't comply with opensource licenses, so authors of Copilot lost the right to use opensource licensed code permanently, until they settle the case with authors of the code.
It’s also common to see GPL license for non-commercial usage and paid licenses for commercial usage.
If CC-BY-NC prohibits commercial use, it is not an open source or free software license (which have compatible definitions, but differ in motivations).
AFAIK, Creative Commons was set to create a set of licenses in the spirit of open source for creative works, and I wouldn't expect them to be open source at all.
You are likely using the wrong license then.
Fairly straight forward solution to your very unique problem.
It’s such a BS argument to say “your license didn’t anticipate the future, it’s your fault.” No, that’s not how law works.
Furthermore, law is not ethics. I said it’s ethically questionable because that’s what matters. Not if a court will find Microsoft guilty of some kind of overreach.
Anybody with even passing knowledge of law knows this, so please, stuff it somewhere.
It literally is though.
You don't get to change your mind on an agreement because something happened that you didn't expect.
Rare exceptions are not acceptable in other situations.
If you, on rare exceptions, include copyrighted songs in your YouTube videos you still get strikes.
Citibank couldn't recover 900 million dollars it transferred too soon just because it was a rare mistake.
Microsoft shouldn't get a pass.