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Changing how we develop Ladybird

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Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#191

Post by iaaan »

embedding-shape wrote: post #145
patates wrote: post #131

When AI first happened, I was afraid I was going to eventually lose my job. And while I've been lucky since, many did, and that hurt a lot. When people are losing something to automation, regardless of the economics of the situation, you cheer for the humans, or at least hope that society keeps being fair to those who are most affected. Now I see communities being affected. When you kill PRs, you not only kill the co…

First off, to have conflicting feelings about something is really normal and doesn't immediately point to a problem, it's extremely human, and I feel similar to you to. I'm a creative + programmer, I hate to see what's happening in some communities yet I too use agents for development, it'd be like avoiding Google + SO when they first appeared, feels like there is a clear "before/after" moments with those, and with L…

I, very genuinely, highly recommend reading the Wikipedia page about the Luddites if you feel confused. This is a class consciousness problem. People feel conflicted because they know they aren't acting in their own best interests when they use generative AI (i.e. it does not lead us, as a society, to a good place -- mainly due to our bought-out legislature).

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#192

Post by ivanjermakov »

debugnik wrote: post #180
ivanjermakov wrote: post #170

> Ladybird remains open source. The source code will continue to be publicly available under an open source license. We usually call open source software without open collaboration source available software. This is terrible news, defeating core beliefs people had in Ladybird. Not an open browser I wished for.

Hell no, open source is just about the licence, and source available generally refers to proprietary licenses that at least let customers access the source. This is just the cathedral model to open source, as opposed to the bazaar you clearly prefer, but it's still open source.

By definition yes, but I believe most people consider open contribution essential for OSS.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#193

Post by cromka »

debugnik wrote: post #180
ivanjermakov wrote: post #170

> Ladybird remains open source. The source code will continue to be publicly available under an open source license. We usually call open source software without open collaboration source available software. This is terrible news, defeating core beliefs people had in Ladybird. Not an open browser I wished for.

Hell no, open source is just about the licence, and source available generally refers to proprietary licenses that at least let customers access the source. This is just the cathedral model to open source, as opposed to the bazaar you clearly prefer, but it's still open source.

Amen to that. Let's not redefine an already very precise terminology.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#194

Post by bmitch3020 »

As much as I wanted to see another browser alternative succeed, Ladybird has lost my trust. Using LLMs to rewrite the entire codebase was already extreme. But eliminating external contributors is a precursor to a rug pull. And rewriting the entire codebase can now be seen as another step in a rug pull.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#195

Post by embedding-shape »

iaaan wrote: post #191
embedding-shape wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, to have conflicting feelings about something is really normal and doesn't immediately point to a problem, it's extremely human, and I feel similar to you to. I'm a creative + programmer, I hate to see what's happening in some communities yet I too use agents for development, it'd be like avoiding Google + SO when they first appeared, feels like there is a clear "before/after" moments with those, and with L…

I, very genuinely, highly recommend reading the Wikipedia page about the Luddites if you feel confused. This is a class consciousness problem. People feel conflicted because they know they aren't acting in their own best interests when they use generative AI (i.e. it does not lead us, as a society, to a good place -- mainly due to our bought-out legislature).

Again, I don't think there is any universal truths here, no correct nor incorrect answers, it's all very subjective. For example, I'm conflicted about the thing as a whole, but also I wouldn't say "Usage of generative AI for sure leads society to a worse place" like you just implied, that's too absolute for me and not something I'd agree with, and it wouldn't resolve the conflicts we're talking about here.

Maybe your legislative feels bought out, that sucks, but that's not the situation nor the feeling everywhere in the world, certainly not where I live, so also doesn't seem to be related although if I assume where you live, I totally understand why you're currently feeling like that.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#196

Post by TekMol »

For an open source project, is there any reason to still accept code contributions?

Feature requests are valuable because they tell you what users want.

Error reports are valuable because they tell you under which circumstances the code fails.

But the code that implements those features and fixes those errors can now be written by AI. AI follows all the rules for how code is supposed to be written in your project. Is already producing very high quality code. And soon it will produce a quality that no human can match.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#197

Post by winterbourne »

dm_ wrote: post #90
mabedan wrote: post #35

I can understand where they come from. If most of the pull-requests were AI-coded, well, the maintainers are equally capable of prompting Claude Code themselves. I think the whole game of software engineering, open source or not, has completely changed. A lump of code doesn't mean or imply the same thing as it did 2 years ago.

I think this is the key point. A few years ago, if I send a complex PR that compiles and passes tests, that implies a certain amount of time and cognitive investment on my part. It seems likely that I wouldn't invest that if I didn't also understand the codebase, the feature or bug I'm working on, etc. Now, that understanding is roughly as expensive as before, but AI has vastly reduced the cost of generating the code…

> that implies a certain amount of time and cognitive investment on my part

Yes, this is the takeaway for me. A PR can no longer be a reasonable proof of work.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#198

Post by gbalduzzi »

smartmic wrote: post #181
cpcallen wrote: post #42

On the one hand, if you grew up in the baazzar, moving to the cathedral might feel like the "death of open source" even if it is really just a return to an earlier way of working. On the other hand, while not accepting external code contributions will certainly improve their security posture it will also make it more difficult to identify who to invite to join the priesthood.

There are great Open Source projects doing fine with the cathedral style, just look at Sqlite and its siblings (Fossil, …). So I do not see a problem with Ladybirds decision, in contrary, IMHO it strengthens the human aspect of software development and puts the brakes on AI free riders

I still don't see solutions on how a normal person can become a mantainer though.

If all relevant open source projects close up their contributions, you can't enter the project anymore from an external point of view.

Almost all open-source public figures started by being interested in a project and submitting PR to it, until eventually either joining the project as core mantainer or creating a separate open source project. The path is now closed, and I don't see a way in, outside of creating a popular open source yourself

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