several years ago, back when I realized Microsoft acquired both GitHub and LinkedIn, it occurred to me that between the ...

several years ago, back when I realized Microsoft acquired both GitHub and LinkedIn, it occurred to me that between the control of those two things, plus Windows and VS dev tooling, that one company had arranged for themselves to get into a position of extreme surveillance capabilities over the field of modern software engineering. Apple and Google were up there too but clearly a tier below.I remember thinking about how Microsoft had a history of sociopathy going back to the Bill Gates era. And I remember thinking, "I bet Microsoft leadership will look to leverage their relatively unique position to boost their own profits and power further, regardless of whether its wise or kind to the vast majority of us software engineers."Fast forward: OpenAI, MS/GitHub CoPilot, Claude etcThey trained up those LLMs on our code, without advance warning, without permission, without paying us or giving us credit, and certainly without providing us all pensions or even stock shares. And now the vibe co...