No. They're not. They're advertising that they are.
They are providing it to a very small set of high-profile OSS maintainers some opaque algorithm picked out. Having high-profile adopters is just good business.
Didn't OSS maintainers already voluntarily approved such uses when they published their work under an OSS license?
One fundamental aspect of being open source is not limiting the purposes of use. If we now say that "code-generation AI training" is not allowed without prior approval (in addition to the license itself), then it's not open source anymore...
I approved some of my code for being reused under the terms of the AGPL. Co-pilot is very welcome to scan it and generate derivative AGPL code.
If I write AGPL code, and co-pilot scans it and makes a very similar program to it for a FAANG, who then proceeds to compete with my open-source tool by using the creative ideas generated there-in, but with a proprietary tool, that's not very fair. That's why I chose the license I did.
FAANG is more than welcome (indeed, encouraged) to use my code for any purpose permitted under the license. That includes everything except making it proprietary.
I've tried running copilot with the starting lines of my code. It generated code with identical creative ideas. It was the equivalent of taking Star Trek, and generating a new movie with the same plot line, but with names changed. That's not legal.
My code was specific enough that this wasn't just chance or other similar code. I work in a pretty narrow domain.
I did use copilot for coding myself, and a lot of what it generated was unique. But it is also a good paraphrasing tool. Running a movie script backwards and forwards through Google Translate to get different phrasing, and then swapping out new names, does not a new movie make. Ditto here.
Perhaps they chose maintainers from OSS projects they scanned?
I'm not defending Microsoft's market tactics, for obvious reasons, but we do have to consider that anyone can publish whatever insignificant code as OSS and become an "OSS maintainer" out of nothing.
They have to draw the line somewhere. Nowhere they draw will make everyone happy.
