Historically, Microsoft -- itself an entity plagued with anti-trust sentiment in the past -- slagged the GPL in public for years, but was unable to do anything about its ascent and propagation.
Now they may have found a way. And that I think is the potential anti-trust issue here.
What is one of the main obstacles to Microsoft's monopoly dominance in the software sphere? The Linux kernel, it's everywhere. And it's under the GPL, a license explicitly resistant to "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (old school Gates/Balmer MS). Microsoft right now is not emphasizing an anti-Linux, anti-GPL focus, but it clearly has in the past and it (and others) could definitely do so again in the future.
Systems like CoPilot have the potential to be for the GPL (or other copyleft type licenses) what cryptocurrency 'mixers' or 'tumblers' are to money laundering laws. A potential to be an automated way to pull pieces of IP out of those licenses and into other codebases without respecting the obligations that go with it.
A lot of the dialog on here and other threads on this forum in the past shows me that understanding of copyleft licenses among the open source and developer community is really low right now. This is the license that the Linux kernel is licensed under, it is extremely important. There should be better recognition of the rights and responsibilities afforded by it.
The GPL was explicitly formulated as a way to protect portions of the hobbyist and free software community from potentially predatory commercial interests. Remember it's always possible to attempt to negotiate a commercial non-copyleft license with an entity that has released its source under the GPL. But if you don't, you have to respect its distribution requirements. It's fine to be personally opposed to using the GPL for your own work, but it is important to understand the obligations that come with it. And that includes systems that harvest data from it automatically.
Now they may have found a way. And that I think is the potential anti-trust issue here.
What is one of the main obstacles to Microsoft's monopoly dominance in the software sphere? The Linux kernel, it's everywhere. And it's under the GPL, a license explicitly resistant to "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (old school Gates/Balmer MS). Microsoft right now is not emphasizing an anti-Linux, anti-GPL focus, but it clearly has in the past and it (and others) could definitely do so again in the future.
Systems like CoPilot have the potential to be for the GPL (or other copyleft type licenses) what cryptocurrency 'mixers' or 'tumblers' are to money laundering laws. A potential to be an automated way to pull pieces of IP out of those licenses and into other codebases without respecting the obligations that go with it.
A lot of the dialog on here and other threads on this forum in the past shows me that understanding of copyleft licenses among the open source and developer community is really low right now. This is the license that the Linux kernel is licensed under, it is extremely important. There should be better recognition of the rights and responsibilities afforded by it.
The GPL was explicitly formulated as a way to protect portions of the hobbyist and free software community from potentially predatory commercial interests. Remember it's always possible to attempt to negotiate a commercial non-copyleft license with an entity that has released its source under the GPL. But if you don't, you have to respect its distribution requirements. It's fine to be personally opposed to using the GPL for your own work, but it is important to understand the obligations that come with it. And that includes systems that harvest data from it automatically.