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Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?

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51–60 of 63 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?

#51
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Interested in how this turns out.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/ai-industry-horr...

Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?

#52
> I don't know yet what I think, but my latest side project I decided to create privately on github.

You're concerned about LLMs stealing your code, yet you're still using Github in any form? You should be careful even using VSCode at this point, regardless of whatever promises they make.

Putting everything on github (public or private) is corporate OSS brainrot, as is MIT-everything-by-default (rather than copylefting everything).

In fact, back in the SF era, GPL variants dwarfed MIT/BSD by a wide margin:

https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2014/11/14/open-source-licenses/

http://sogrady-media.redmonk.com/sogrady/files/2014/11/black...

Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?

#53
post #6

Aaahahah 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 ?

I strongly agree. LLM’s have eviscerated the core idea and motivation behind using the GPL, in a way I didn’t at all see coming. We’ve published a lot of very unique GPL code (eg in sagemath), which anybody can now easily “regenerate” as part of some other closed (or open) software using an LLM. They wouldn’t even know they are creating a derived work of our GPL code. I have had to come to terms with this...

Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?

#56
It does not affect how I do it. I do not use LLM, but if I publish something, then someone can do what they want with it, including LLM usage. I do not want to allow excessive scraping for that purpose, but once someone has a copy for whatever reason (including being mirrored elsewhere, which I would encourage), it is now available for public use.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?

#57
post #9

In the grand scheme of things, even GPLing your code doesn't matter as the AI is still trained on it. As AI increases in capabilities, it can just read and rewrite your code. And all code is useful in some way. As mentioned in the comment, private on GH has no bearing, it is still in full sight of the AI. From what I can tell, OSS submissions are on the rise as people embrace AI to work on things they could not previ…

> From what I can tell, OSS submissions are on the rise as people embrace AI to work on things they could not previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44729461

Thanks for the link. Code itself will be devalued as the artifact.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?

#58
Its not that many people got paid a lot before for their open source contributions (and pride/ attribution will just change as we get used to the reality) and with models improving more, most projects will be possible to recreate from scratch with very little effort anyways. What changed a lot is how i think about accepting contributions, why go through the hell of PR dance and wait for fixes that take forever or get ghosted if i can just have an agent finish or recreate the PR with immediate reactions and no sensibilities to being called an idiot. Similarly, GPL and garbage dual and "custom" licenses by companies pretending to be open source will just be dead as soon as there are standardised cleanroom rebuilding pipelines. Why would i contribute to something prohibiting me to build a business on top if i can spend a few thousand $ and 2 weeks max to have the whole project rebuild as Apache 2.0 based on behaviour analytics and spec extraction? Apache 2.0 and MIT will be the gravitational force that OSS and even closed source goes to because no one has to care anymore. Of course there are exceptions but those will grow fewer and fewer. Also the hurdle for an open source library or project to be viable existing as a real entity will grow immensely, i would consider the cost of anything on npm too high if it can be rebuild at hoc in a few files and save me from dependencies.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?

#59
It has changed things for me.

I recently stepped down from the core team of an open source project. There were various factors that lead to that, but LLMs were one of the factors that contributed to the decision. They are one of the things that has lead to me getting less enjoyment out of working on the project over the last year or so.

In a worst-case scenario, LLMs make it much more possible for someone to generate a large and plausible looking "contribution" with very little investment of effort on their side and minimal understanding of the problem they're trying to "solve". But your time as a maintainer is still finite. If you as a maintainer take every submission at face value as a good faith contribution, then you can easily put a lot of time and effort into the review of these contributions. That can come at the expense of spending that time on higher value activities. In the case where someone has chanced a low-effort LLM submission there is a higher chance that you're going to spend time and effort reviewing this thing, and then the original submitter will just close the PR or ghost when they realise it is more complicated than they thought. You can also end up wasting time on LLM written issues that contain a plausible looking detail that turns out to be spurious.

IMO there is a big difference in the impact LLMs have on software developed by a closed group of contributors (e.g: a team within a company) and open contribution projects. LLMs massively increase the ability of time wasters to submit plausible looking but low effort spammy issues/PRs. This is less of a problem in a high-trust environment. You are not usually trying to protect yourself from spammers and scammers within your own team so you're likely to see more of the benefits of LLMs there and less of the downsides. Conversely, you'll be exposed to those downsides more in a big open contribution bazaar style project where you accept contributions from world+dog.

That is not to say that LLMs have no benefits. Maybe all of this is a problem that will be solved over time. I will still continue to publish and maintain some smaller things, but I think right now is a very bad time to be a maintainer of a large open contribution project.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think differently about working on open source these days?

#60
post #18

I owe my entire 20 year career to open source, so if anything, I plan to increase the number of contributions I make as time goes on; it's one of the few areas in life where I feel indebted.

Same (although my history with FOSS is 40 years).
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