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Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

blog.gitbutler.com

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Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#71

Post by trumpdong »

joshka wrote: post #66
MBCook wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the GPL say you have the freedom to relicense code or derivatives under MIT by fiat? Isn’t having to stay under the GPL a very big part of the GPL license?

> Where does the GPL say you have the freedom to relicense code or derivatives under MIT by fiat? The first part of this sentence (where in the GPL) is unreached if the second part of it is unmet (relicense code or derivatives) which I contend it likely is. You're begging the question. However: > The output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a cov…

Asking an LLM "here's a thing, rewrite it in Rust" is pretty clearly creating either a derivative work or a different form of the same work, just like asking a transpiler would.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#72

Post by trumpdong »

joshka wrote: post #57
nextaccountic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they would be just wrong. I hope someone with standing sues

I suspect that the issue is more likely that the LLM code doesn't have an author and hence some parts of it can't be licenses, it's less likely that it's infringing on git's copyright for various reasons. (I am not a lawyer, but I do read copyright law for funsies).

why wouldn't it? If you run git through a compiler it's still copyright the git devs, same if you run it through an LLM.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#73

Post by hankbond »

> It's like giving wishes as a genie. You gotta be super explicit with the ground rules. I have used the genie analogy before. It used to feel more like a Golem but now with the whole Fable sabotage mode https://jonready.com/blog/posts/claude-fable5-is-allowed-to-... it certainly feels more Genie-like.

Previously I described it as "Models give you what you ask, for not what you want". Now with Fable they don't even give you want you want so idk.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#74

Post by trumpdong »

gpm wrote: post #33
nextaccountic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they would be just wrong. I hope someone with standing sues

I don't think it's that clear cut. The functional parts probably aren't copyrightable, only the stylistic ones. It's going to be a mix of courts applying laws in new ways that hasn't been done before and fact specific questions about what actually persisted through the LLM if it goes to court. I'd be fascinated to see what happens if it does. Both in the analyses that we'd get of what the LLM did to the codebase and…

functional parts not being copyrightable means that you can't claim a program is a copyright violation based on the fact it does the exact same thing based on compatibility reasons (you can copy what the program does). E.g. git stores refs in .git/refs, so does grit, that's not a violation. You still can't copy the program.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#75

Post by uecker »

blastonico wrote: post #70
MBCook wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They all seem to be rewrites for the sake of "performance". And yet this performs dramatically worse. A slower, untested, incomplete git implementation, all for the low low price of $10-$15,000. And don’t forget it wasted a bunch of human time in the process. So if someone mentioned somewhere else there is already a Rust port a group is doing somewhere. How much could they have accomplished with this much money and…

But... it's memory safe. Not that git has any important memory issue, but now people with skill issues in C can contribute to it without breaking stuff.

They can still break stuff memory safely.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#76

Post by NewJazz »

joshka wrote: post #59
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably would have been less bad if he had chosen MPL-2.0 or LGPL-2.1-or-later. But he chose MIT, which cuts at the core of the intent of licensing the project with a share-alike license.

Tell me, can I create a copyrighted video that's not GPL licensed using ffmpeg? Now tell me how creating a rust library using the git test suite is different?

Medium, substitutibility, basics of copyright law.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#77

Post by uecker »

ianm218 wrote: post #67
tredre3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nginx serves ~20% of the web, memory unsafe languages might just become untractable for critical exposed to the web infra if the rate of critical CVE's on these rises faster than they can be patched That is true, however did you actually do any research into nginx? Is it particularly prone to memory bugs? I honestly don't know the answer but you seem to be coming from a place of C bad, therefore nginx super vulnera…

https://securityaffairs.com/192132/hacking/nginx-rift-an-18-... The project was inspired by that. Also unlike most other projects, nginx is directly exposed to the internet often times which makes it more vulnerable than i.e. Redis/ Valkey or something that would be running within a companies network generally. "C Bad" is a bit reductionist... but I think there is some truth to the take " Until you have the evidence,…

I think the risks of a rewrite - especially when using AI - are far more problematic than memory safety. In the long run those C projects will be memory safe in the next five years using memory safe C implementations.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#78

Post by usernametaken29 »

I’m all for memory safety and such but honestly what’s the use case for this? Showing off agentic development? In 10+ years git has never failed on a memory overflow or else. Sometimes software is “good as is” and I’m pretty confident git classifies as such. I’ve also never really hit the limitations of git, even with teams of 20+ developers and lots of binary artefacts. You got to really stretch git limitations, in which case you might need to move away from git, and a rust rewrite will not help in any way whatsoever. So again … why?

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#79

Post by joshka »

trumpdong wrote: post #71
joshka wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where does the GPL say you have the freedom to relicense code or derivatives under MIT by fiat? The first part of this sentence (where in the GPL) is unreached if the second part of it is unmet (relicense code or derivatives) which I contend it likely is. You're begging the question. However: > The output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a cov…

Asking an LLM "here's a thing, rewrite it in Rust" is pretty clearly creating either a derivative work or a different form of the same work, just like asking a transpiler would.

There's no evidence that "here's a thing, rewrite it in Rust" is the technique Scott used here.

"here's a test suite, write code in rust that makes that suite pass" is reasonably supported by the article. That would likely not be a derivative work.

Re: Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with agents

#80

Post by absintini »

usernametaken29 wrote: post #78

I’m all for memory safety and such but honestly what’s the use case for this? Showing off agentic development? In 10+ years git has never failed on a memory overflow or else. Sometimes software is “good as is” and I’m pretty confident git classifies as such. I’ve also never really hit the limitations of git, even with teams of 20+ developers and lots of binary artefacts. You got to really stretch git limitations, in…

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