Mastodawn

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@janvhs/116184719405207871

We’re quickly approaching a bifurcation in FOSS with projects including or not including LLM generated code.

We’ll have to come up with a name so we can talk clearly about it.

I desperately hope the non-LLM side is going to be large enough to include a full stack, otherwise there’s a lot of work ahead of us for no good reason.

—

At least until we have truly free and open, non-exploitative, consentually sourced, sustainably powered tooling, which is a bubble or two away at least.

Ben Ramsey Mar 7

@janl Everything in the world is designed for polarization, at this point.

✧✦Catherine✦✧Mar 7

@ramsey @janl excellent. there's plenty of things worth being firm about

Ben Ramsey Mar 7

@whitequark @janl It’s so exhausting.

Florian Neumann

@janl this - but also I appreciate how the LLM bubble also helps onboarding normal developers by providing on point introductions.

Dawn Ahukanna Mar 7

@janl why are developers “sleep walking” into “white goods” commodification - https://www.rolandberger.com/en/Insights/Publications/The-white-goods-market.html?
Going from an embodied, practiced, creative skill to a pressing buttons on a “sealed, pre-packaged appliance”.

I want “Star Trek” A.I. tech or J.A.R.V.I.S A.I. from Iron Man. Not this confabulation engine.

The white goods market

Many white goods manufacturers were long successful with their strategy of "engineer for eternity, build production scale and leave selling to retail". But future success will rely heavily on direct customer interaction based on data.

Roland Berger

Johannes Link Mar 7

@janl NGOS Non-Generative Open Source

@janl Might the split form along GPL vs BSD/MIT lines? Both the copyleft and LLM-free positions seem aligned on attitudes to ecosystems and the responsibilities of folks using code for their own ends.

Larry Garfield Mar 7

@cford @janl I was wondering the same. People that just want efficiency vs people that actually care about ethics and protecting users.

@Crell @janl This list is mostly *GPL with the notable exception of NetBSD. https://codeberg.org/brib/slopfree-software-index

slopfree-software-index

A list of open-source projects that reject AI-generated code

Codeberg.org

@Crell @janl Oh, and Servo is MPL, unsurprisingly.

Lucas Dohmen Mar 7

@cford @janl @Crell Unfortunately, I think it is not that simple. Vim has a GPL-like license and is entirely in on the ”AI“ hype

https://hachyderm.io/@AndrewRadev/116175986749599825

Andrew Radev (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image Vim's lead maintainer has fully lost his goddamn mind

Hachyderm.io

Frost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄

@cford @janl Nah, there are other reasons to want BSD/MIT/otherwise permissive (and I'm tired of figuratively-literally everyone pretending there aren't).

We make our own stuff, actually a lot of it public domain even, because it's not the kind of stuff companies would want to exploit (though with LLMs... they will anyway. but will a license stop them? NOPE) and I'd rather my code be more accessible to other open source devs, regardless of whether they agree on the exact specifics of the license to use. Like, use my BSD/MIT/public domain code in a GPL project? Go for it! You can't go the other way even if the downstream person is a fellow actual open source/free software (yeah I use those terms interchangeably, Stallman can bite me :3) person who's not trying to go for Profit™.

@IceWolf @janl Personally, I'm very sympathetic to permissive licences. That's how I release all my little things, though they're often experiments or artsy stuff rather than infrastructural things. I think copyleft and permissive are both ethical choices, for different ethical perspectives.

Frost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄

@cford @janl Yeah! GPL type stuff makes total sense for stuff like *waves paw at Linux* where the corporations would totally try to pull shit. It's the smol stuff where permissive licenses shine.

John Maxwell Mar 7

@janl Free software - software for the love of it - has always been a very minority position. We papered over that fact when the money-lords found us convenient.

Now it's re-appearing in a different guise.

@janl “Artisanal” seems pretty close, though IMO it also comes with unwarranted negative connotations.

“Crafted”? “Auditable”?

@janl i propose: slopen source.

Tubemeister Mar 7

@janl Free Of Slop Software.

@janl
I guess I don't care how the code was written, so long as the author can answer questions about it, and the code is of sufficient quality that I can read and maintain it.
Usually one or both of those are not the case when someone makes a LLM PR.

If they want to make the chatbot refine from something that "definitely executes" into something that is robust, minimal, and follows a human-like pattern, honestly I might not be able to tell that it's bot slop. Be less stingy with your tokens?

@dnavinci you don’t care that the models are full of stolen data, use exorbitant amounts of energy and water, make the objectively worst people on the planet even richer and put the power to create software into the hands of three companies?

(“No” is a fair answer)

DNAvinci Mar 10

@janl
Naturally I care.
But they already did it anyways, so do you want the improvement or do you want to throw away that electricity?
Obviously that should be discouraged, but most of these folks aren't going to read your PR policy before having it written.

I'll level some nuance here -
I use self hosted models on my $500 gaming GPU.
It's still stolen data, but I pirate a lot too.

Also check out Hank Green's nuance on the water use.

Happy to dismantle capitalism as well.

@janl did all the existing stuff stop existing? the whole point of FOSS is *my* freedom to choose... and that includes not "upgrading" to slop

my computer could receive no updates for eternity and itd still be a damn fine computer and id be able to make it do new tasks

@bweller that’s an option, but ir wouldn’t be practical for me to maintain my own patchset for security updates for a while linux desktop.