Not due to llms.
Put simply… Too much drama, too little technical joy.
I had my best technical achievement writing proprietary software at one faang, if i have to be honest.
Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
31–40 of 63 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#32I kinda want to quit making my code publicly available. It is my believe that the model may output license contaminated code and any license I put into my code will not be accurate, so my policy is I don't use AI coding on my publicly available open source code. However, this also means that I'm working for free fueling the AI industry.
However, it is quite fun to remove the boring part in programming with AI, so any hobby code I write I won't be making them public.
Currently I'm working on a way to use models trained from MIT-licensed code (eg. Comma) by using normal commercial model to supervise it. I believe this make the output code only be tainted with permissive code, and so I can now slowly use AI to write open source code again.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#33Aaahahah people tend to forget that GPL exists. If they use your software to build another, then you can sue and make all their software opensource. Also, you dont have to use github where your source is easily pray of LLM. You can host your own.
I don't think GPL licenses really stop companies from scraping the code and using it to train their LLM's. Also, how would you prove they actually used your code ?
Nothing. You protect yourself with hiding your code away from Github. Anyway, when software will be produced WITH LLMs, that will inevitably repeat your code, then you will sue.
Opensource is MADE to be copied. It's meant to be. You WANT it. You just want it to benefit EVERYONE and not corporations who make money out of it, and there are defenses to that.
Opensource, free software, is a philosophy, not a business opportunity per se. Business is just tangential to it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#34Open Source was always a collection of anarchist experiments in different ways of working. It turns out that it's quite effective and popular, and people will organize themselves naturally around projects they find interesting.
That said, capital has always been squeezing open source. Whether it was the Embrace; Extend; Extinguish mantra of Microsoft, Amazon's hosting of Open Source in AWS to control the market for it, or Oracle's litigiousness about trademarks and patents. To say nothing of all the companies who profit from it and give nothing back in return.
LLMs being trained on Open Source software is nothing new with respect to capital attempting to consume it and profit from it but not giving anything back in exchange.
So no, I'm not worried, I'm not going to change anything. I expect maybe we see a license that says you cannot use it as AI training material at some point in the future, and the lawyers will fight over that for a decade or two.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#35No, it hasn't changed my approach. I open source things precisely because I don't care if other people profit from it or not. In fact, I *hope* the users of my code gain a better life because of it, just like how I hope the readers of my blog learn something (however small, sometimes).
Whether that process is intermediated by a LLM or not is not really relevant.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#36Open Source is one of the most humanistic, progress driving cultures people have ever come up with. I mean I am fucking shocked that people don't get this, our whole fucking modern world, all the parts that make stuff work, every last bit of it is built on top of or dependent on OSS. There isn't a single lab, company, person or country that doesn't use and benefit from open source. Whether they know it or not. It is…
> supported widespread fractal improvement starting at the individual level
Fitting that open-source was popularized by people who worked with nanotechnology, https://www.facesofopensource.com/christine-peterson/
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#37I really don't care about LLM training. If I don't want code to be used, I won't share it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#38No, when I licensed my open source code as MIT I essentially stated to not care what happens to it.
I am bothered that I was able to reproduce code from my blog through an LLM (suggesting exact same default values). That was not licensed for permissive use.
I still contribute to open source because I still use a lot of it. In my mind I owe it to the community to contribute back, and if nobody did the same my workflow would be a lot worse.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#39Specifically I'm looking for licenses that bar loading the code into LLMs. Github is feeding open source code into Copilot and selling it to people and they need to be stopped.
Could you move to Gitlab? Or do they do it too?
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#40Specifically I'm looking for licenses that bar loading the code into LLMs. Github is feeding open source code into Copilot and selling it to people and they need to be stopped.
They also provide free hosting.
Besides, compute is not free and alledgedly llms require a lot of it.
Personally, I would look at the numbers before complaining.
Where you are right though is that it does lower the barrier for people to copy simpler projects. For large ones, the llms are still not up to par.
Unless you want people to pay a llm plugin per-project which is akin to having a subscription service for netflix, hulu, disney plus, amazon prime, etc. Just bad UX. I think there is no fighting it.