I am more hesitant to release code on GitHub under any licenses now. Even outside of GPL-esque terms, I've considered open sourcing some of my product's components under a source available but otherwise proprietary license, but if Microsoft won't adhere to popular licenses like the GPL, why would they adhere my own licensing terms?

If my licenses mean nothing, why would I release my work in a form that will be ripped off by a trillion dollar company without any attribution, compensation or even a license to do so? The incentives to create and share are diminished by companies that won't respect the terms you've released your creations under.

That's just me as an individual. Thinking in terms of for-profit companies, many of them would choose not to share their source code if they know their competitors can ignore their licenses, slurp it up and regurgitate it at an incomprehensible scale.

(And refusing to opt in shouldn't have to mean switching to a new hosting platform.)

> Beyond that, the class members aren't likely to get much if any money. The only party here who stands to clearly benefit is the attorneys.

That's the case in pretty much any class action. I look at class actions as having two purposes: to require that the defendant stops doing something, and to fine the defendant some amount of money. Sure, individual class members will see very little of that money, but I look at it as a way of hurting a company that has done people wrong. Hopefully they won't do that anymore, and other companies will be on notice that they shouldn't do those bad things either. Of course, sometimes monetary damages end up being a slap on the wrist, just something a company considers a cost of doing business.

Now, Microsoft is violating other people's software licenses to repackage the work of numerous free and open source software contributors into a proprietary product. There is nothing moral about flouting the same type of contract that you depend on every day, for the sake of generating more money.

Either the entire Copilot dataset needs to be made available under a license that would be compatible with the code it was derived from (most likely AGPLv3), or Windows and Office need to be brought into the commons. Microsoft cannot have it both ways without legal repercussions.

If an AI model is the joint property of all the people who contributed IP to it, it’s a pretty hugely democratic and decentralizing force. It also will incentivise a huge amount of innovation on better, richer data sources for AI.

If an AI model isn’t joint property of the IP it learned then it’s a great way to build extractive business models because the raw resource is mostly free. This will incentivise larger, more centralised entities.

Much of the most interesting data comes from everyday people. A class action precedent is probably good for society and good for innovation (particularly pushing innovation on the edge/data collection side)

This legal challenge is coming one way or another. I think it’s better to get it out of the way early. At least then we will know the rules going forward, as opposed to being in some quasi-legal gray area for years.