Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

blog.codeberg.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 168 posts

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#91

Post by arkwin »

jraph wrote: post #80
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…

Open source developer: I'm going to open source my software so the world can use it for whatever they want!

World: creates LLMs

Open source developer: >:(

Maybe don't open source your software if you're going to get mad about it?

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#92

Post by AussieWog93 »

I run an open source project, contribute to others and in the last 6 months I've set up two homelabs (one at work, one at home) out of hard rubbish/ewaste running a bunch of open source software.

I don't get the anti-AI sentiment.

From the maintainer standpoint, it basically eliminated entire classes of frustrating, tedious jobs that existed before - especially with regards to packaging and CI/CD

No longer do I have to do the back and forth dance of getting slightly further into a 20-minute build over the course of an evening until GitHub Actions finally produces a correct build. I just log into `gh`, give Claude the specs ("Please make it as statically-linked wherever sensible, support these platforms xyz back to versions abc") and it loops 2 or 3 times itself until the build is done.

If a user posts an issue, Claude can track it down in 15 minutes flat. Our issue backlog was cut by around 70% in a couple of months after Opus 4.5 was released - I could fix 5 issues in a coding session rather than 1, and new users who would vibecode a fix would often upstream the solution via PR.

As a user, deployment of many FOSS apps has gone from a nightmare to 15 minutes of prompting. I have a Claude skill that has the user accounts, IP addresses and configs of the servers. You just say "Install Immich on server xyz" and it does it. My wife says she wants the Immich photos on the Chromecast, I sign into adb and say "Make the Immich photos the screensaver on the Chromecast", and it installs ImmichFrame.

If I run into issues, instead of just giving up I'll just prompt a fix. I'll often clean things up, draft a PR and upstream it - and to be honest results have been mixed. Some maintainers (myself included) are appreciative that someone has upstreamed a fix that others can find useful, others are actively hostile to it and plenty more are just too busy to review the PRs.

I do empathise with them about the wasted CI/CD resources for small projects with a handful of users, but the rest just sounds academic and out-of-touch. From my own experience as an early adopter I've found that AI has massively increased my participation in the FOSS sphere - as a maintainer, contributor and consumer.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#93

Post by bayindirh »

arkwin wrote: post #48

[flagged]

If you look at the discussion at https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116962454004862117

The changes are more nuanced. It's not banning AI assisted coding. It's banning purely and mostly vibe-coded projects. If you're using LLM/AI assistance responsibly, you're on the clear.

There's nuance, and Codeberg guys understand it, AFAICS.

To quote the person who shared the news (tante): No, assistive use is not prohibited (ref: https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116963072821111167).

Signed, a developer who doesn't use LLMs.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#95

Post by cmrdporcupine »

xeyownt wrote: post #45
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and leave it completely up to their own personal judgement on when and how to apply their rules, and on public forums people who asked for more clarity on "boundaries" were called "creeps" and other insults. That's not healthy democratic culture.

Called by whom? Since when is Codeberg responsible of the Internet culture?

Said community calling itself a community and behaving in a way on the community forums that encompass such community is... yes, take responsibility.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#96

Post by arkwin »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #90
arkwin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

It's less about "earning" and more the attitude and approach to the work. The flippant nature of people expecting the same respect for some piece of work that was churned out by a machine, as someone who understands every part. I know I used "earn" a lot in the last reply, but that was a shorthand for something more complex. A combination of appreciation, discipline, and a common work style. The LLM stuff is being ga…

Hey, thanks for taking the time to reply. And you bring up some good points. I'll be the first person to tell someone I used Claude on this. Hell I make sure it says co-authored by claude on my github projects specifically because I'm not trying to hide the fact that I'm using LLMs.

I think you are correct, is not not really an LLM problem as much as its a person problem.

But there doesn't seem to be a good way to fix this. If anything LLMs just expose someone's integrity? I don't know, its a hard answer. Some people use LLMs just because they are translating languages.

How do you prove "work" or "knowledge?"

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#97

Post by catlifeonmars »

conartist6 wrote: post #78
petcat wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Legal ambiguity tends to have a chilling effect. Although I think this is overshadowed by hype at the moment.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#98

Post by arjie »

Seems fine. A git host is not a particularly hard piece of software to self-maintain and there’s always GitHub for most things.

I can understand why. The cost to the host is entirely in volume of code, and creating volume is cheap now. Without some constraining measure they will have lots of AI code. Even just by itself that would make it impossible to have.

It’s also a cultural thing. This is for that niche of developers. That’s all right. Communities have their own (often-hyperspecific) rules. HN certainly does and we’re all here.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#99

Post by bayindirh »

arkwin wrote: post #91
jraph wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Open source developer: I'm going to open source my software so the world can use it for whatever they want! World: creates LLMs Open source developer: >:( Maybe don't open source your software if you're going to get mad about it?

Personally, the reason I hate LLMs is not they trained on public code. They trained on code which doesn't allow that kind of thing to begin with.

Training LLMs is not the problem. Consent, violating copyleft licenses and other ethical issues is the problem.

IOW, I don't hate the tech. I hate how it's built. On top of infringements, being ignorant of others' labor and being proud of stealing what others done.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#100

Post by graemep »

devmor wrote: post #76
graemep wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its very rare for people do deliberately do bad things. Almost everyone thinks they are doing the right thing. My point (which I think should be apparent in my original comment) is that we should look at doing things "for their own good" has a very bad history. Now do you get it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY

Post reply on HN