There’s a meme going around that an Open Source project “can’t” prevent LLM use by contributors because there’s no technical means to enforce this. This is idiotic and shows just how disingenuous slopmongers will be when told they can’t just submit slop.
Did you know there’s also no technical means to enforce that you didn’t copy some code you’re contributing from a proprietary codebase and say it’s original work? Somehow we haven’t given up on that!
@eschaton As a FOSS maintainer, I'm very aware that the work being given away for free in these projects has been the result of humans burning their finite life to give the result to others.
Finally they are getting some help (not from the people posting this kind of wailing) and the complaint is "no, I only want the result of your human work, your actual life force in your code, or I feel cheated".
Current AI coding agents write code that passes the same static analysis as humans do. And I have literally been given many much worse patches by humans that needed significant work to be able to include them.
1) If you don't understand what the Mar 2026 coding agents produce, why are you giving advice about it?
2) I sometimes wonder if FOSS has created a terrible moral hazard in the users, who thoughtlessly consume the work for free. It seems to create entitled monsters.
Chris Hanson
degenerating degenerate