Re:Open source body quits GitHub, urges you to do the same
by chrismorgan on Saturday July 02, 2022 @03:09AM
(#31956904)
I am reporting facts, not making any judgement on the legitimacy of their claim.
As far as practical consequences are concerned: if their fair use claim is struck down, Copilot is dead, unequivocally, because the only kind of license they can satisfy is a public-domain-equivalent one, and there’s not all that much such code. This is why I said “depends entirely on”.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31849107 where I said much the same thing, and pointed out that any mentions of the GPL specifically are a red herring.
That clause is doing a lot of work here. You seem to be starting with an assumption that their claim is correct, but it's kind of a ridiculous assumption. Here are the usual categories of fair use, according to the US copyright office.
"criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research"
Which of these do you think describes Copilot? I say none. I also suspect that most people and most courts would say none. I don't think "arbitrary incorporation into other works without attribution" fits even a generous definition of fair use. Some might even recognize it as a definition of plagiarism. Can you make your case instead of assuming it?