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SDL bans AI-written commits

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Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#11

Post by bakugo »

spicyusername wrote: post #7

On the one hand open source projects are going to be overrun with AI code that no one reviewed. On the other hand, code produced with AI and reviewed by humans can be perfectly good, maintainable, and indistinguishable from regular old code. So many processes are no longer sufficient to manage a world where thousands of lines of working code are easy to conjure out of thin air. Already strained open source review pro…

> On the other hand, code produced with AI and reviewed by humans can be perfectly good, maintainable, and indistinguishable from regular old code.

I have yet to see a single example of this. The way you make AI generated code good and maintainable is by rewriting it yourself.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#12

Post by throw5 »

Why are these projects still on Github? Isn't it better to move away from Github than go through all this shenanigans? This AI slopam nonsense isn't going to stop. Github is no longer the "social network" for software dev. It's just a vehicle to shove more and more Copilot stuff.

The userbase is also changing. There are vast numbers of new users on Github who have no desire to learn the architecture or culture of the project they are contributing to. They just spin up their favorite LLM and make a PR out of whatever slop comes out.

At this point why not move to something like Codeberg? It's based in Europe. It's run by a non-profit. Good chance it won't suffer from the same fate a greedy corporate owned platform would suffer?

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#13

Post by sph »

pelasaco wrote: post #2

What’s the point? People will just fork it and improve it with AI anyway. In another hand, it would be an interesting experiment to watch how the original and the fork diverge over time. Especially in terms of security discoveries and feature development.

Go ahead, we're all still waiting for these "AI-improved" projects to appear.

Meanwhile I'll keep using SDL from the official maintainers which have been working on it for decades.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#14

Post by nottorp »

pelasaco wrote: post #2

What’s the point? People will just fork it and improve it with AI anyway. In another hand, it would be an interesting experiment to watch how the original and the fork diverge over time. Especially in terms of security discoveries and feature development.

> and improve it with AI anyway

No. My impression is that most AI PRs aren't made to improve anything, but to inflate the requester's reputation as an "AI" expert.

> and feature development

There's also this misconception that more features == better...

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#15

Post by sph »

Good move, and a good reminder of how much of an echo chamber Hacker News is on AI matters.

In here, and big tech at large, it's touted like the unavoidable future that either you adapt or you die. LLMs are always a few months away from the (u|dys)topia of never having to write code ever again. Elsewhere, especially in fields where craft and artistry are valued (i.e. game development), AI is synonym of wanting to cut corners, poor quality, and to put it simply, slop. Sure, we're now inundated from people with a Claude subscription and a dream hoping to create the next Minecraft, but no one is taking them seriously. They're not making the game forum front pages, that's for sure.

Personally, I have made my existential worries a little better by pivoting away from big tech where the only metric is line of code committed per day, and moving towards those fields where human craftsmanship is still king.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#17

Post by johndough »

ramon156 wrote: post #10

> Given that the source of code generated by AI is unknown, we can't accept it under the Zlib license. So what about SO code snippets? I'm not here to make a stance for AI, but this thread is leaning towards biased. Address the elephant, LLM-assisted PR's have a chance of being lower quality. People are not obligated to review their code. Doing this manually, you are more inclined to review what you're submitting. I…

> So what about SO code snippets?

StackOverflow snippets are mostly licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 or 4.0, so I'd wager that they are not allowed, either.

The SDL source code makes a few references to stackoverflow.com, but the only place I could find an exact copy was where the author explicitly licensed the code under a more permissive license: https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/blob/5bda0ccfb06ea56c1f15a...

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#18

Post by fhd2 »

reactordev wrote: post #6

People who can wield AI properly have no use for SDL at all. It’s a library for humans to figure out platform code. AI has no such limitations.

So AI generated code doesn't benefit from stable foundations maintained by third parties? Fascinating take I don't currently agree with. Whether it's AI or hand written, using solid pre-existing components and having as little custom code as possible is my personal approach to keep things maintainable.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#19

Post by embedding-shape »

throw5 wrote: post #12

Why are these projects still on Github? Isn't it better to move away from Github than go through all this shenanigans? This AI slopam nonsense isn't going to stop. Github is no longer the "social network" for software dev. It's just a vehicle to shove more and more Copilot stuff. The userbase is also changing. There are vast numbers of new users on Github who have no desire to learn the architecture or culture of the…

> Why are these projects still on Github?

At this point, projects are already on GitHub due to inertia, or they're chasing vanity-metrics together with all the other people on GitHub chasing vanity-metrics.

Since the advent of the "README-profiles" many started using with badges/metrics, it been painfully obvious how large this group of people are, where everything is about getting more stars, merging more PRs and having more visits to your website, rather than the code and project itself.

These same people put their project on GitHub because the "value" they want is quite literally "GitHub Stars" and try to find more followers. It's basically a platform they hope will help them get discovered via.

Besides Codeberg, hosting your own git server (via Forgejo or Gitea) is relatively easy and let you do so how private/public you want.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#20

Post by pelasaco »

arnvald wrote: post #3
pelasaco wrote: post #2

What’s the point? People will just fork it and improve it with AI anyway. In another hand, it would be an interesting experiment to watch how the original and the fork diverge over time. Especially in terms of security discoveries and feature development.

Will they? Will someone have enough time, skill and dedication to maintain it? I don’t think using AI will by itself make a big enough difference, it’s still a lot of work to maintain a project

> I don’t think using AI will by itself make a big enough difference, it’s still a lot of work to maintain a project

I think you are wrong. The "a lot of work maintaining a project" would be reduced, specially issues investigation, code improvement, security issues detection and fixes. SDL isn't a that relevant project, but "ban AI-written commit" - which reading the issue, sounds more like ban "AI usage" - is counterproductive to project.

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