That was out of abundance of caution, not based on any legal precedent.

In fact, the little precedent that exists over learning from copyrightable code is in favor of it.

More important, the rule urged by Sony would require that a software engineer, faced with two engineering solutions that each require intermediate copying of protected and unprotected material, often follow the least efficient solution (In cases in which the solution that required the fewest number of intermediate copies was also the most efficient, an engineer would pursue it, presumably, without our urging.) This is precisely the kind of “wasted effort that the proscription against the copyright of ideas and facts . . . [is] designed to prevent.” (Sony v. Connectix)

That demonstrates that copyright laws are already stifling innovation.

It demonstrates that it stifles copying. That may make it easier for the copier to innovate, but doesn’t dispute the main argument for having copyright protection: that, without the protection of copyright, the code wouldn’t have been written.

I think in the case of open source code, most of it still would have been written if no copyright protections existed.

Most of it? I would think >50% of open source code writers find it necessary to restrict the rights to copy and use their code. In a world without copyright protections, would the GPL be legal?

(and I guess courts might, in the future, say the GPL expires when copyrights on the code expire)

Sure, but given the timetable for changing the law, it still seems pretty reasonable to apply the same standard to Microsoft (and by extension Github) in the meantime

Yeah, that's a good argument to fully disprove this as a loss to society, and instead as a gain.

The fact that the laws are inconsistent and expensive to defend against leads companies like Microsoft to take this conservative approach that slows down progress.

That's the goal. To stifle using someone else's work.

Like, copyright laws are also stifling my innovative business creating BluRays of Disney films and selling them on Amazon.

Copyright laws aren't preventing you from learning cinematography by watching said Disney movies though, and using all their techniques for your own project.

OpenAI did a dirty job though judging by the cases of the model just reproducing code to the comment, so I can understand why one would criticize this specific project.

That sucks for little snippets of software though, doesn’t it? It’s like copyrighting individual dance moves (not allowed under the current system) and forcing dancers to never watch each other to make sure they’re never stealing.

I mean, it's not like the copyrights are keeping you from doing things. It's stopping you from looking at someone else's source. And it's not like source is easy to accidentally see like dance moves are.

Way, way back in 1992, Unix Systems Laboratories sued BSDI for copyright infringement. Among other things, they claimed that since the BSD folks had seen the Unix source code, they were "mentally contaminated" and their code would be a copyright violation. This led to the BSD folks wearing "mentally contaminated" buttons for a while.

Do the TypeScript team code with their eyes closed?

Not sure, TypeScript didn't exist back then :)

Have you seen some of that codebase? ;)