> [Microsoft] doesn't attach a GPL license if it draws of GPL code.
It's been a routine practice by developers in industry, for at least a decade, to go read an implementation of a GPL thing, then "rewrite" it in "C#" or "Swift" or "Go", and diligently not tell anyone, and that's it, the GPL code was whitewashed.
GPL has been effective at preventing a specific kind of commercial productization of a specific codebase. Given how influential GPL protected code really is, it failed to prevent Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft from copying GPL code unattributed in all the ways that actually matter.
Copilot is distilling big corporate programming culture. Copying ("rewriting") code found online, let alone in complete implementations, isn't something I do anymore, maybe for years, in my daily software engineering practice. But copying is essential to big corporate programming as trackpants, oily hair and working 1 day a week.
Well, I mean I don't disagree that GPL is not that well enforced[^1], but it still doesn't make that a good thing. Yeah, Copilot wonton disregard for GPL is maybe a symptom of corporate culture, but I think the impact of that connect you draw is that this makes holding Copilot and MS accountable all the more important, since there's a potential precedent being set now.
[^1]: Probably, I only know about the French court case a few years back and I recall there being a bit of nuance in what the actual implications were.
> [Microsoft] doesn't attach a GPL license if it draws of GPL code.
It's been a routine practice by developers in industry, for at least a decade, to go read an implementation of a GPL thing, then "rewrite" it in "C#" or "Swift" or "Go", and diligently not tell anyone, and that's it, the GPL code was whitewashed.
GPL has been effective at preventing a specific kind of commercial productization of a specific codebase. Given how influential GPL protected code really is, it failed to prevent Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft from copying GPL code unattributed in all the ways that actually matter.
Copilot is distilling big corporate programming culture. Copying ("rewriting") code found online, let alone in complete implementations, isn't something I do anymore, maybe for years, in my daily software engineering practice. But copying is essential to big corporate programming as trackpants, oily hair and working 1 day a week.