>I look at class actions as having two purposes . . . to require that the defendant stops doing something
That's my point. Many of the class members don't want the company to stop doing this.
I have code on GitHub, and Copilot is a useful tool. I don't care if my code was used to train the model. Sure, I personally could opt out of the suit, but that would be utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The bottom line is, if I'm a coder with code on Github and I like Copilot, this suit is a huge net negative.
Even more importantly, I want to see the next version of Copilot that will be created by some other company, and then the next version after that. I want development to continue in this area at a high velocity. This suit does nothing but put giant screeching brakes on that development, and that is just a shame.
If lawsuit goes through, it's not likely that Copilot would disappear.. but there would be a checkbox to opt-in your code. You could check it and your code will be used to train model.
I have some code on Github as well and would not want it to be used in training, nor by Microsoft nor by other company. It is under GPL license to ensure that any derived use is public and not stripped of copyrights and locked into proprietary codebase, and copilot is pretty much 100% opposite of this.
If this lawsuit is successful it doubt it will change anything at all. Microsoft will just pay the damages as a cost of doing business and continue what they are doing. Maybe they will add an opt-out.
seems like a great opportunity for Microsoft to alter copilot so it's opt-in to get your code scanned, and to mandatorily add licensing and attribution to outputs
I know you said you're OK with it as is, but many aren't, so if I'm a coder, this suit represents a big net positive for me, being a way to reduce the probability of someone laundering my code away without proper attribution or license attention
That's my point. Many of the class members don't want the company to stop doing this.
I have code on GitHub, and Copilot is a useful tool. I don't care if my code was used to train the model. Sure, I personally could opt out of the suit, but that would be utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The bottom line is, if I'm a coder with code on Github and I like Copilot, this suit is a huge net negative.
Even more importantly, I want to see the next version of Copilot that will be created by some other company, and then the next version after that. I want development to continue in this area at a high velocity. This suit does nothing but put giant screeching brakes on that development, and that is just a shame.