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Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

blog.codeberg.org

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Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#71

Post by cmrdporcupine »

inigyou wrote: post #68
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a somewhat active GPL/copylefted project on there for 11 months, but I didn't even see a point in signing up as "community member" to become a part of the registered voting community in order to vote ... because from reading the threads around this it was already an indiscriminate pile-on of moralism and judgement and it was clear where things were going to go from day one. Any voices that said anything on the…

I think those people are trying to say that if someone doesn't know whether their project is mostly AI-written, they're an idiot or lying. Nobody doesn't know that. Unless the point of the project is to exactly balance at 50% AI code, then you know whether you're vibecoding or regular-coding. Their comparison was to a no-Nazis rule, not to Nazis. That comparison works. Only vibecoders argue about the intricacies of a…

The point is that the comparisons used in both cases are absolutely inappropriate. I never said they were saying vibecoders are Nazis or rapists. I'm saying using those as analogous/similar comparison points displays an absolutely bonkers lack of decorum, nuanced thinking, or "democratic" behaviour and also trivializes those actually horrendous cases.

More worrisome is I saw this same set of comparisons made over and over in multiple threads.

Like, it's clear many people in this community see themselves as violated in some sense by the actions of American AI companies. The emotional response is legitimate. Transitioning from that emotion to indiscriminate policy is not, and making comparisons like that in a public forum is distasteful.

As for "if someone doesn't know whether their project is mostly AI-written, they're an idiot or lying. Nobody doesn't know that" -- that is not the question. The question is the precise definitions of what "AI-written" means, because people legitimately wanted to know if their projects were going to be voted off the island. Because like it or not based on your moral principles -- vast amounts of people are using these tools now. I can't say a majority because I don't have the numbers but it would absolutely not surprise me. And I can guarantee a large number of projects on codeberg use(d) them. So clarify in advance of the policy passing what the policy will be. Instead the language was left ambiguous so they could choose to exercise personal judgement.

Calling them stupid or dishonest is a dick move. People legitimately wanted to know.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#72

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

EdiX wrote: post #69
rnd0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a lawyer, but additionally there's also legal concern about the legality of the training source. How can you verify that the model you're using wasn't trained and therefore incorporates code that is not licensed for sharing. e.g. someone theoretically uploading the shared source windows kernel to github and it being added to copilot. There's no reasonable belief that or similar scenarios cannot happen and does no…

> Not a lawyer, but additionally there's also legal concern about the legality of the training source That's not how copyright works. If you use a pirated copy of photoshop the resulting image is not illegal.

If the resulting image contains copyrighted content, such as a snippet of photoshop's proprietary code, then it most certainly might be infringing.

It's not as simple as your reductive analogy. It's for a court to decide.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#73

Post by zbentley »

shevy-java wrote: post #67
tptacek wrote: post #57

This makes sense. The largest project hosted on Codeberg today is, what, Zig? Zig is also openly hostile to LLM agents. It's a a clear identity for the site: a home for projects that identify as anti-LLM. I disagree with basically all of the logic they're using here, but that's the point: not every site needs to be for every person. Clearly there are quite a few software developers who agree vehemently with the stanc…

I don't see the correlation here. You insinuate that codeberg's opinion is due to hosting Zig. I don't see any indicator of that. I also don't see your points of contention - it may help to be more specific. Last but not least, I am also not sure they are a community hub. This depends on how many people use codeberg. IMO it is still a niche right now; perhaps that will change, but right now I am not entirely certain…

> You insinuate that codeberg's opinion is due to hosting Zig.

I didn’t interpret GP that way. Rather, they were saying that like-minded projects are appropriately homed.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#74

Post by sanderjd »

tptacek wrote: post #57

This makes sense. The largest project hosted on Codeberg today is, what, Zig? Zig is also openly hostile to LLM agents. It's a a clear identity for the site: a home for projects that identify as anti-LLM. I disagree with basically all of the logic they're using here, but that's the point: not every site needs to be for every person. Clearly there are quite a few software developers who agree vehemently with the stanc…

Yep, different strokes for different folks.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#75

Post by arkwin »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #65
arkwin wrote: post #48

[flagged]

> You are not creating software with the exact rules that I have made up in my head on how software should be made, so I'm going to build a wall and hate you and the code you make. The funny thing about this comment is out of the gate it screams the exact reason people don't want the LLM generated code in their zone. This reads similar to people who make prompt art getting upset that they're not taken seriously. Peop…

I can see the point you are trying to make, and I'll make a counterpoint to that. When you play the "didn't earn" card, you are really getting nowhere. It's a bad argument.

It's putting up the gate, "I feel you didn't work hard enough for X result, but I did, so I must be better"

I drive a manual car. Should I hate every automatic car driver?

I have a master's degree in cybersecurity; should I shit on everyone who doesn't when they try to mention anything involving cybersecurity? I mean, I have a piece of paper that says I've earned it?

On some level, yes. I would listen to the advice of a doctor over a random person on the internet.

On another level, it's like saying, " Oh, you didn't have a blacksmith handcraft that knife for you, and you bought some machine-made knife? We should ban machine-made knives; the person making a knife using a machine didn't 'earn it '."

Perhaps you shouldn't create code; after all, you probably didn't develop a compiler. Or the computer chip running it... Or the OS.. Did you really earn the right to develop something?

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#76

Post by devmor »

graemep wrote: post #53
pona-a wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not platforming your slop is the same as killing minorities? Okay... Codeberg is not a state. This is not life and death. If you have any disagreements, feel free to join another community. The network effect hadn't kicked in yet, you're free to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

I agree with you in principle. A note on anti-homosexuality laws. Almost all criminalised particular acts, and as a result most criminalised male, but not female homosexuality. Most did not carry a death penalty. An aspect of many that has a lesson for our own times is that they were sincerely meant to be for people's own good - e.g. Turing was being "treated", not punished. In some cases the same laws criminalised t…

> they were sincerely meant to be for people's own good

That is an incredibly offensive bastardization of history.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#77

Post by inigyou »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #71
inigyou wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those people are trying to say that if someone doesn't know whether their project is mostly AI-written, they're an idiot or lying. Nobody doesn't know that. Unless the point of the project is to exactly balance at 50% AI code, then you know whether you're vibecoding or regular-coding. Their comparison was to a no-Nazis rule, not to Nazis. That comparison works. Only vibecoders argue about the intricacies of a…

The point is that the comparisons used in both cases are absolutely inappropriate. I never said they were saying vibecoders are Nazis or rapists. I'm saying using those as analogous/similar comparison points displays an absolutely bonkers lack of decorum, nuanced thinking, or "democratic" behaviour and also trivializes those actually horrendous cases. More worrisome is I saw this same set of comparisons made over and…

> I'm saying using those as analogous/similar comparison points displays an absolutely bonkers lack of decorum, nuanced thinking, or "democratic" behaviour and also trivializes those actually horrendous cases.

Are they correct? That should be the most important thing.

> More worrisome is I saw this same set of comparisons made over and over in multiple threads.

Maybe because they're correct

> because people legitimately wanted to know if their projects were going to be voted off the island.

Thus outing themselves as AI projects. Nobody with a non-AI project doesn't know that it's non-AI.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#78

Post by conartist6 »

petcat wrote: post #56
conartist6 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering if copyright was part of it, but their blog post didn't mention copyright. For me that would be the single biggest reason. People who vibe code don't legally own the copyright to the output (to the best of my hobbyist-non-lawyer knowledge), so they cannot themselves provide permission for others to be able to legally copy.

> People who vibe code don't legally own the copyright to the output In the US at least, the PTO has not said this. They have said that artwork is not copyrightable if it was substantially "generated" with little human input. They have not said anything about software or other creative works. And certainly nothing about software that has been carefully "vibe engineered" with lots of human input, direction, and review…

Yes, my understanding is that there is some test, as yet not clearly defined, in the middle of those two extremes. At one extreme you let AI make all the choices and own nothing. At the other extreme you use AI more or less like a tab complete and own everything.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#79

Post by somnium_sn »

It is fine to have corners of the internet that run in a particular way.

My issue however, is that this is changing the rules on people. Codeberg initially was a FLOSS alternative to big company Github. Now it's more narrow, an alternative to Github and only for people who don't want to use AI. What's the next step? This is the problem, you either a platform and be, within legal reasons, agnostic, or you are trying to be a specific community. It is unclear to me if the specific community that Codeberg wants to be today will be the one it wants to be in a year from now, because clearly it's changing.

I cannot rely on a service provider that does change that quickly.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#80

Post by jraph »

arkwin wrote: post #48

[flagged]

> You are not creating software with the exact rules that I have made up in my head on how software should be made, so I'm going to build a wall and hate you and the code you make.

More like:

> You are creating software using a tool incurring massive risks and costs for the rest of us even though we don't use it ourselves, we don't want you here

.

> plenty of people are using open offline models to code

…that needed to be trained and required siphoning the web too.

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