> Is it unethical to use software for profit?
When the licenses explicitly say that if you use the software for profit it requires attribution, the answer is clearly yes. My code on github is licensed such that if you use it, you must say where it came from. The only way this isn't at the very least unethical (because it goes against my wishes as owner of the code) is if you argue that github isn't "using" the code, which clearly isn't true, because if everyone was able to opt out there wouldn't be a product for github to be working on at all.
Nobody can answer this because it depends on the code and the resources of the entity suing you, but in general yes. This is why clean room design is a well-defined strategy: depending on the code and company, you would indeed not be allowed to work on the project because of the fact you'd seen a competitors solution previously.
You're intentionally conflating scale here to make them seem the same.
> no warning that somebody/something is ingesting the repo
An individual reading code on their own time is not the same as ingesting terabytes to train a machine. No matter how much you believe in AI working similar to the human learning (it doesn't), they are not comparable.
> private profit
Again, the difference between an individual reading code to work for a salary is orders of magnitude different from ingesting terabytes of code so a company can create a new feature. Claiming these things are the same only makes sense if you ignore the massive differences in scale and the differences between how humans and machines learn.
Regardless of the legality, one of these situations is clearly ethical compared to the other. In the case were you get a job based on your knowledge of GPL software, you still must respect the license if you use that code commercially (i.e. at your new job). And yes, if you reproduce GPL code you "learned" from, you are violating the license.
A company ingesting an entire GPL codebase without warning or any way to opt-out in order to create a closed-source feature that they and only they will profit off of is clearly not the same as an individual reading the code and getting a job based on those ideas.
Yes, of course it does, because if every user opted out then the model would not work as well as it does, and github would not be able to profit off the work of others to the degree they are (or will be). Just because they are taking code on a massive scale does not mean the outcome is inevitable: don't get it twisted, copilot only works because of the code human beings have written.
Yes, and those people are violating the licenses of the code when they do that. It's not unreasonable to expect a massive company like microsoft to not do this on a massive scale.
Hmm, I'm not sure this is as good of an example as you think it is. If the only way to get kids to do their homework was to essentially threaten them with physical "labor" (obviously 5 push-ups isn't much) it definitely feels like there may be larger issues at play.
I'm a bit late to this, but check out keybase chat. You can sign up on desktop / mobile / whatever you like, and desktop users can even drag and drop to a folder on their computer to share files (with like a 250gb per person limit right now I think), so that gets you a lot of the functionality of email right there.
There's really nothing wrong with making a concerted effort to be more polite or accepting on the internet or anywhere else for that matter. Framing wanting to have good self-presentation and wanting to be a great coder as mutually exclusive is clearly disingenuous.
Saying things like this is really really dangerous in my opinion, because in addition to being totally false it can discourage someone struggling with depression / anxiety / whatever from seeking treatment because they don't want to feel "numb." I'm sure I can speak for not just myself but many others here and say that without antidepressants I'd probably be dead, and the only part of life they've eliminated are the lowest valleys of depression. At one point I considered not taking them because I believed in this same misconception (I was afraid to lose my creativity), but I'm very glad now I did not give in to that fear.
Please do not spread misinformation about potentially life-saving medication.
If the person doesn't get charged in the end, eventually the police will stop showing up when the Port Authority calls because someone takes a picture.