Linus might want to look over Oracle's reasoning and reconsider the potential legal harm that can come to the Linux kernel from accepting AI code.
Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
131–140 of 411 posts
Re: Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except. . . (accept)... SaaS solves the problem of needing one piece of software to communicate between multiple (many) users and/or other pieces of software. Can't picture a functioning world where every piece of software is custom and requires factorial amount of AI comparisons and reviews to patch the API to communicate. In fact, it's impossible! There's not enough compute to handle a factorial explosion. I really…
Given how much of the industry is SaaS that would be such a self own! Wow, fantastic, you can build all your software in house, zero dependencies. Wait, your users can do the same? And they don’t need to pay you anymore for any of your cool services because they just asked their agents to recreate your infra from scratch? Interesting, truly the future of humanity
> Wow, fantastic, you can build all your software in house, zero dependencies. Wait, your users can do the same? And they don’t need to pay you anymore for any of your cool services because they just asked their agents to recreate your infra from scratch?
The cherry on top is that OpenAI and Anthropic brainwashed your coworkers and your company's C-suite into uploading the entirety of the "proprietary" codebase onto their servers thousands of times per day over the last three years.
Re: Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
#133So they will not be accepting most security patches. Fun.
Re: Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
You truly envision a future where every program is written in a custom programming language, for a custom operating system, for a single user who will now be in charge of understanding and maintaining it forever? That user being your grandma, your baker, your CEO?
I do. Software as a list of requirements and that's it. The local LLM appliance everybody has taking in a document specifying hardware, interfaces, and requirements and spitting out software changeable locally via conversation with its users. In the same way you have a cookbook with recipes to make dinner instead of ordering out.
> Software as a list of requirements and that's it. [...] a document specifying hardware, interfaces, and requirements [...]
For that, you'd want the list of requirements and hardware documentation to be written in a precise, formal language. That's no different than writing them in a programming language (though a declarative one, instead of the more common imperative ones).
I've in the past (way before LLMs existed) thought about automatically generating device drivers from hardware documentation. But besides the need for very precise documentation, hardware never works exactly as documented; a human-written device driver can avoid problematic areas (perhaps even by accident), while a computer-written device driver would end up exploiting every corner case of the documentation.
Re: Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' - lawnmower doesn't give a * about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmo…
The flaw in the analogy is that oracle is made of people. It's not a lawnmower, it's a group of people with human motivations and human thoughts. It's true they don't HATE people, but it's also true they absolutely have no conscience in negotiations and have zero concern about relationships.
> It's true they don't HATE people
Maybe so, but perhaps the most successful part of the AI marketing pitch has been exploiting management's hatred of labor (and vice versa).
A significant motivator for a lot of the nonsensical AI layoffs and initiatives over the last three years has been that it's a great opportunity for management to get ill on their slaves.
Tech labor got a little too big for their britches during the hiring spree of 2021, and AI was a great opportunity to take them down a peg, even if it offered little in the way of ROI.
Re: Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' - lawnmower doesn't give a * about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmo…
The flaw in the analogy is that oracle is made of people. It's not a lawnmower, it's a group of people with human motivations and human thoughts. It's true they don't HATE people, but it's also true they absolutely have no conscience in negotiations and have zero concern about relationships.
How many bureaucracies in history have behaved in deeply misanthropic ways, especially when led by misanthropic leaders?
Don't underestimate the power of the desire to keep one's job to cause a large organization to behave towards its own self-perpetuation despite the moral lines that must be crossed by individuals to do so.
Re: Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' - lawnmower doesn't give a * about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmo…
The flaw in the analogy is that oracle is made of people. It's not a lawnmower, it's a group of people with human motivations and human thoughts. It's true they don't HATE people, but it's also true they absolutely have no conscience in negotiations and have zero concern about relationships.
Oh you fell into the trap... Just don't anthropomorphize Oracle...
Re: Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
#138y’all seem to be missing the fact that Java is a mature product. it has left the “move fast and break things” era of it’s development. code is a liability, and they likely have more to lose than gain by allowing AI contribution.
Oracle Java is also basically effectively in KTLO mode.
The biggest use of Java currently is Android, and Google is on a path to migrate to Fuchsia eventually.
The second biggest use is Apache Spark/Kafka, but with LLMs now, you can pretty much re implement all of that functionality in pure C.
They just want a legal angle, since this is how they make most of their money.
Re: Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
#139What happens to OpenJDK when Oracle dies? That's looking increasingly likely on a 3-5yr horizon.
The same that happened when Sun died: it gets bought by someone else.
Re: Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, their internal PRs have the same problem, but they are pushing an AI narrative from the c-suite and can hide the reality of their private code bases. The "limited ROI on AI investment" articles will continue to percolate slowly into the brains of the LinkedIn hive-mind until we hit a tipping point, and then we'll finally shut up about how a handy dev tool with some decent use-cases is the dawning of the singulari…
You can get your coworkers to stop sending you slop (I've done it already on my team) but it's probably much harder to stop an onslaught of open source contributors.
Nonsense, it's easy: you just need a social process like Linux has. Patches are ignored unless you've proven yourself to somebody. Start by participating in technical discussions on IRC or the smaller mailing lists; do that for a while before you submit patches. For smaller projects: "if I don't know you, I don't merge you".
Linux's LLM policy allows AI-generated code because the project was never vulnerable to this DoS attack in the first place. They kept the social defense they've had for decades.
The killzone here is Github culture, where people decided it was normal to accept code from anonymous randoms with anime avatars. They're doomed.