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Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

blog.codeberg.org

161–168 of 168 posts

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true just because you say it is. You're rejecting the notion that the rule is written badly, and as an excuse for other problems, and, as written, is actually unenforceable. If I pushed my repos, they wouldn't even be able to tell that the code was written by AI, because I author every commit. Silly argument. Time will judge.

If you were on the right side of it, you'd know.

"The right side"? You just keep posting thought-terminating dismissive replies. I don't even use Codeberg, and there is no "right side". That's the point.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were on the right side of it, you'd know.

"The right side"? You just keep posting thought-terminating dismissive replies. I don't even use Codeberg, and there is no "right side". That's the point.

The right side is the one that doesn't get you banned from Codeberg. But since you don't use Codeberg, it seems like there is no problem.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. > with people who have fully adopted claude in their work flows. They don't care about the code they push. This just isn't true and it's the cynnical self-limiting assumption the belies rules like the TFA. It's like when HN was full of people claiming that you wer…

> I've put some serious work into vibe-coding them. Months of work, infinite polish, infinite revisions, without writing a single line of code. Not being pedantic, but this is not "vibe-coding", as other commenter and blog post means it at least. Parent emphasize lack of work, polish, revisions: > They don't care about the code they push. They generate, prune, generate, prune in 10kloc increments. They're apathetic t…

No, the TFA policy is specifically against LLM usage, not low quality code.

What you quoted is just how people paint LLM-heavy users just like how people used to paint JavaScript users as incompetent.

That there are people using LLMs to write 100% of their robust, derisked code disarms their argument or commits them to a sillier one like TFA's "we ban LLMs because you might get it to build a CI pipeline before you have users".

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#164
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…

Tangential but one day when bored at work, I browsed the GitHub discussions for Helix, my main text editor, and the most active thread was regarding adopting an LLM policy for the repo[0]. The maintainer thought it would be beneficial to use an LLM policy similar to Ghostty which is AI friendly with human review. Now the whole topic is "brigaded" by a small number of extremely passionate anti-AI voices that immediate…

You should see pro-AI zealots. Oof!

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#165
post #22

Since the blog post doesn't actually include the change to the TOS and only links to it at the very end, here it is: > 7. You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools (including services such as Claude , OpenAI Codex ). Such projects having an unclear copyright status (see requirements § 2 (1) 1 and § 2 (1) 3) and furthermore have little safeguards to ensure that they do no…

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.

You don't need to own the copyright if the output is not copyrightable.

You seem to think one needs to have copyright to publish something but that's not true. If you don't infringe on anyone else's copyright there's no problem. And others can of course copy themselves.

The only problem is if someone else had copyright to the output.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#166
post #48

[flagged]

Hiiiiii, developer who hates LLMs here. waves I think I've avoided all of the LLM debate thus far, but I figure that some of my actual positions probably ought to be represented in this discussion instead of shadow-boxing. I hate LLMs because I've had to sink a lot of hours into defending services and content that I host for myself or for others from companies that couldn't be bothered to write polite crawlers. This…

I agree with most of what you write, and I think it is good that you mention these details. I also do not use LLM/generative-AI and I do not intend to use LLM/generative-AI, and many of my reasons are like what you have.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#167
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…

> It seems unlikely to me that the PTO would declare that a software project that heavily utilized an AI-based advanced autocomplete would make it not copyrightable. Why would they have different rules for one potentially copyrightable material versus another? What the PTO (courts, actually) have not said is how much and what kinds of work a human must perform to transform a machine-generated work into a copyrightabl…

> Why would they have different rules for one potentially copyrightable material versus another?

There is a longstanding distinction between expression (copyrightable) and facts and ideas (not copyrightable). Nor is this merely used as a binary category: the degree to which a work rests on facts and ideas, versus expression, is very much taken into account when considering the question of infringement.

Classic cases involve works like maps and biographies, versus works of pure fiction. You can surely see how the expression of the former is constrained in ways in which the latter is not.

The algorithm to reverse a binary tree is not subject to copyright. Nor is a court likely to accept the use of "left" and "right" as variable names as evidence of infringement.

They would treat the cases differently because the cases are different.

My opinion has always been that copyright law is an awkward fit for software, and remains so. That said, the iteration and edit cycle which is normal to agent-driven software development, has a rather different character than the more normal 'workflow' for art, which is: "drawing of Asuka eating an elote in front of the Chinese Theater" then picking the one the user likes the most.

There's also the realpolitik to be considered: courts are simply unlikely to shut down the use of LLMs in software development, that horse has left the barn. There's always some margin between 'can' and 'will'.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#168
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't say that about the above example. Especially given several Global South countries see it as an example of foreign interference.

Strawman argument.

Well grounded argument
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