Ludovic CourtèsMar 13

It’s already tempting notably for smallish projects to resort to genAI:
https://toot.aquilenet.fr/@civodul/116132543248503962

But I think a race to the bottom has started in #FreeSoftware, with this rationale: if “we” don’t use genAI in our project, then we will lose to the competition, whether free slopware or proprietary.

Ludovic Courtès (@[email protected])

I think these two factors—lack of humanpower and a “big” vision—coupled with the passion for technicalities typical of such projects make them particularly vulnerable to genAI. Because yes, “we” want SMP support in Mach and it’s not been happening until this contributor achieved something with the help of genAI.

Aquilepouet
Show threadLudovic CourtèsMar 13

… which is short-sighted and loses track of the whole user empowerment goal that free software is supposedly about.

But the “economic” incentives are here.

Show threadCarlos O'DonellMar 13
@civodul I'm working on a glibc (and jointly a gcc) LLM policy which I'll propose for public review, and the difficulty is in threading the needle between technology that we could use ourselves, and user freedoms. My position ends up being that I want to define a policy that allow the projects the to outright reject *or* accept such changes as they see fit, within certain constraints that support user freedom e.g. either you understand the code or it is reproducible with a tool.
Show threadSiddhesh PoyarekarMar 13
@codonell @civodul that speaks to the validity of the code, and maybe empowers/includes more people (maybe the opposite too, if LLM use discourages those ideologically opposed?) in the development community for the project. What does it do for the bigger software freedom picture though? What does it do for copyleft code bases? Is the move towards all FOSS code becoming public domain (given that US courts are leaning towards LLM generated code not being copyrightable) a net positive one?
Show threadtusharhero

@siddhesh_p @codonell @civodul Just because the code is public domain doesn't mean the companies won't still find ways to keep it proprietary. It will be asymmetrical, they will take our code because it is in public, and just refuse to share their "public domain" code (public domain doesn't force you to share code.).

So no, this won't be a net positive. There will be new legal mechanisms to shackle the users.

Mar 13 at 3:43pmWeb
Show threadSiddhesh PoyarekarMar 13
@tusharhero @codonell @civodul yes, that is the point I'm making.