Yes, I use to throw all my random experiments on github. Now I host my own code repos, block bots as much as possible, and keep most repositories private. Those repos that I do open source (because I want to share with people I know), I release under AGPL
Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
41–50 of 63 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#42Yes.
I always licensed my projects under GPL variants. That contract was broken by LLM vendors. So now I'm taking my toys and going home.
All my new projects are hosted on Sourcehut. I trust Drew when he says they are not letting LLM bots have at it.
Its not just the dev either. I'm no longer posting any content on blogs. Almost all of my other online interactions have moved to private channels and closed forums. I'm no longer giving my work away for free, unless you've passed the entry tests.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#43Everything I do differently wrt open source is because of humans and the way they act.
Now that we have LLMs I can make them tell off the people harassing me and generate features that do the opposite of what they asked for
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#44Aaahahah 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 ?
Do companies train LLMs with anything any more? All the code we write now is written by LLMs, they can't really train on that.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#45I've drifted away from the OSS subculture years ago, before LLMs. However, I did continue to publicly release source code under permissive licenses. That has absolutely changed because of genAI crawlers. I've removed my sources and have no plans to publicly release any new ones yet. I'll start making my code available again if/when I feel that I can adequately protect it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#46Yes. I always licensed my projects under GPL variants. That contract was broken by LLM vendors. So now I'm taking my toys and going home. All my new projects are hosted on Sourcehut. I trust Drew when he says they are not letting LLM bots have at it. Its not just the dev either. I'm no longer posting any content on blogs. Almost all of my other online interactions have moved to private channels and closed forums. I'm…
I understand why people initially feel this way but the destruction of copyright is a realization of the end goal of the GPL, furthermore the way LLMs do it doesn't seem to impinge on the way it's used practically: preventing corporate administrators from mishandling source.
I wish pro-copy-left people could see this better. The future is brighter than you think.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#47No, the open source code I make is there to be used freely and for all.
LLMs do not change this for me.
I think that open source libraries (but maybe not applications) may be even more relevant now than ever. More application code will be written, and there is still a need for correct and reliable components.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#48It's impossible to develop open source software without having a credit/debit card and cell phone present. Feels more like a scam to me than not but I understand it from an operator's perspective; you have to prevent fraud. From a contributor's perspective who had their life derailed for more than a year, it's a pain to get everything back up and running as it was before.
> It's impossible to develop open source software without having a credit/debit card and cell phone present.
This is absolutely not true
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#49Yes. I always licensed my projects under GPL variants. That contract was broken by LLM vendors. So now I'm taking my toys and going home. All my new projects are hosted on Sourcehut. I trust Drew when he says they are not letting LLM bots have at it. Its not just the dev either. I'm no longer posting any content on blogs. Almost all of my other online interactions have moved to private channels and closed forums. I'm…
I understand why people initially feel this way but the destruction of copyright is a realization of the end goal of the GPL, furthermore the way LLMs do it doesn't seem to impinge on the way it's used practically: preventing corporate administrators from mishandling source. I wish pro-copy-left people could see this better. The future is brighter than you think.
LLMs did not destroy copyright. They inky destroyed copyright for the little guy. As I understand it, neither of the FAMANG have put their main codebase in training dataset. If I train an LLM on the leaked sources I'll get sued right down to my undies. But all the LLM vendors took my code, betrayed the license term about attribution/viral licensing of derived content, but I am told to get stuffed.
I am assuming you are commenting in good faith, but it does tingle my gaslight-senses.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?
#50I have public open source projects on githubs that collect stars.
I'm currently working on a new project(my first big one from scratch using LLM coding), and using a few open source library. 9x under MIT. 2x BSD 3 clause, and 1 apache 2.0.
None of them are copyleft? I didnt do that intentionally. I dont know what i plan to license it; I typically go gpl. It's private until I decide i guess.
My big 'think differently' is that i gain a bunch of responsibility for the project. Do I want that? Am i ready for this long term commitment?