DeckPackerWe should consider making a clear policy on AI contributions for the piefed repository
OpenStarsAutocomplete, spell-check, grammar check, style check, and the like I have no problems with, as they are mere tools enhancing the agency of the programmer.
But someone submitting code written or worse yet designed by a computer is not okay. Just leave it up to the actual devs in that case, or if you must then go ahead and create your own fork or even an entire PieFed replacement if you think you can do better by you pressing a handful of buttons than an actual programmer pressing those same buttons while also knowing what they are doing. If you are going to be a lazy fuck, then just stick with that and don’t submit PRs!?
(I’d love to hear if there is any dissent on this.)
hendrikI believe we’ve discussed this several times already. How It’s rude to show AI output to people in general. I also don’t see any reason to just send in AI output, when the developers could do the same thing if they wanted. Just turn in your prompt instead 😁
The problem with just sending the request to the developers is that often times requests for improvements are dismissed as an annoyance. I have discussed many issues with the way the fediverse works over many years, and many responses are “just build the feature yourself if you want to see it”. After years of never seeing these changes made, when you can just prompt an agent in an IDE to make the changes you want, it is hard not to take that route. Granted, if you are doing it for yourself or a small group of people who may be interested in using the changes you made, that is different from submitting AI generated code to an existing project. But I don’t see anything inherently wrong with vibe coding solutions to problems, as long as you have a general understanding of what you’re doing and how things work.
Yeah, I had that as well. Some developers/maintainers are a bit elitist. Or have weird social skills. Or they’re overstrained or aren’t really motivated to include other people… And it tends to have a chilling effect and make people feel bad. I’ve also been told, just send a PR. And I know this would have been a job of 5 minutes for them to fix some easy thing to make many more users happy. And I now get to invest an hour in setting up some development environment, learn how the project is laid out… And it’s just annoying.
I think it’s a bit of a non-issue with PieFed. All I’ve seen here is constructive people. And a positive tone and atmosphere.
And I believe what you describe is a bit of a tricky situation. It’s what I’d call a “drive-by PR”. They’re not really familiar with the codebase so there’s likely issues in there. And they’re also not willing to maintain it, as it’s an one-off thing for them. So it ends up being one of two things. Either it’s a small and straightforward fix and you accept it. Or someone is customizing your software to their needs and they sent in some larger thing. Now you get a lot of stuff on your plate. See if it’s tied into the rest of the project. Check the code quality. See if they or someone ran the test cases, broke something else in the grand picture. You’re gonna be the one who will maintain that code in the future… And it takes quite some skill to stay calm, use your social skills and maintain focus on what’s important for the project.
I think it’s some delicate balance. It’s generally easier if you have some core developer base in your Free Software project and you know the people who wrote the PR. On the flipside I also often send in PRs when something is broken or I can contribute some smaller things to the various Free Software I use. I learned to make it as easy for them as possible. Read up on the coding standards before, test what I’m doing on my machine first. Add a good description of what I’m changing and why. And usually they’ll say thanks and bother with my requests.