I actually agree, but this is a pretty deep philosophical issue that requires several more blog posts to fully unpack - blog posts I will write. Essentially, I

I actually agree, but this is a pretty deep philosophical issue that requires several more blog posts to fully unpack - blog posts I will write. Essentially, I agree that the very idea of intellectual property is invalid, and my end-game would be to have it overturned entirely, copyright and patents alike banished from this earth. However, a practical view must acknowledge that we live in a world where IP is normalized in the view of the public and in the view of the law. I would ordinarily "walk the walk" here and act as if the world operated according to my moral lens, i.e. not bugging people about compliance with software licenses. In this case, though, that would be counter-productive. The issue is that there is an asymmetry between the software producer and consumer. I believe that the user has a right to the source code for all software they use (praxis: reverse engineering is good even when it's illegal). However, under the current copyright regime, the producer can withhold their source code. If I publish open source software without concern for copyright (e.g. WTFPL), this allows commercial entities to take my code, but does not allow me to take theirs, so there is a power imbalance that works against my interests. So, free software licenses are necessary and important. In an ideal world, without copyright, I would be totally fine with GitHub Copilot - because I would also have access to its source code, and the model, and would be able to modify, repurpose, or sell it myself. But we don't live in that world, unfortunately, which allows GitHub to exploit the power imbalance by ingesting free software into a commercial product that they have the sole right to monetize and dictate terms of use for. It's this exact imbalance that the GPL family of licenses were written to address, and it's a spit in their face to pretend that they don't apply, especially from an organization that damn well ought to know better.