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Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

blog.codeberg.org

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Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#101

Post by jraph »

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?

That's somewhat beside the point and bayindirh addressed this, but I'll answer to this bit:

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

Well, no, it's rarely "for whatever they want". Most open source licenses require attribution, and copyleft licenses require sharing any derivative work under the same license under some conditions. The terms of the licenses open source developer matter and are not there just to look pretty.

This idea that free software is released under no conditions needs to die. The few restrictions open source developers want for their code need to be respected!

And yes, I'm kinda mad the few lines of code I released to the world probably helped those despicable companies to train their despicable artifacts. We couldn't have possibly anticipated that this was coming, but now we know, and indeed the question of releasing publicly at all should be reconsidered. At the same time, we can't always stop doing anything that has bad consequences because otherwise we stop doing anything. So yes, I might both continue publishing free software and be mad at the same time. Any objection?

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#102

Post by VariousPrograms »

Should I be concerned that many of my hobby projects are little "one-off software [projects] specific to my need"? Is Codeberg only for hosting large, community-driven projects that require long-term support? I certainly "don't actually have a community" around my (hand-written) solo projects.

Fair enough if Codeberg isn't the correct place for stupid little personal hobby projects, but that wasn't the sense I got when I signed up.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#103

Post by hombre_fatal »

somnium_sn wrote: post #79

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 t…

Yeah, they are setting up a capricious environment which is hard to avoid with rules like this.

In the blog post they complain about AI-assisted projects being too polished, using CI resources even though it's a one-man project with zero users. (Reasons they don't give for banning it in the TOS)

So, what's the rule exactly? Can I set up release builds on my one-man project or not? What about when the clearly vibe-coded project does it, do I report them? Does everyone just remember to not check in their AGENTS.md when pushing to codeberg?

I think things should just cost money. Far better than a nonsensical honor system around LLMs which has the obvious outcome of hiding LLM use.

That said, they can foster what ever environment they want. I think it's just a regressive self-limiting view that tries to pretend like the world isn't changing with rules that have bad downstream outcomes, as opposed to a platform that accepts reality and figures out what to do from there. And I find that disappointing.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#104

Post by rpdillon »

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…

The argument about entitlement is silly: every generation just "gets" all the benefits and hard work of the previous generations. We didn't have to invent the assembly line, or electricity, or radios, or transistors...I can work for a few hours in a McDonalds and make enough to buy a cell phone that would have power unimaginable to someone even 50 years ago.

And heck, I'm a guy in my late 40s who's been programming since I was 8. I have a masters in CS, and have been a programmer for decades and I don't have the tiniest bit of resentment for the AI builders out there. Sure, they don't have my expertise, but they can still make cool stuff if they work at it.

What's really happening is that Codeberg was build on the assumption that the volume of code submitted would be small, and that assumption no longer holds. So now everyone is backing into reasons why limitations have to be imposed, and of course they won't say "It's because we built this whole thing assuming not that many people would use it, and now we have tons of use, so we're going to ban projects that are the most voluminous."

So instead, it's about malicious code, or copyright status, or entitlement, or some other topic.

As for the Jeff Goldblum quote: "You read what others had done and you took the next step" is literally how human progress is made.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#106

Post by sjs382 »

I mean, they have every right to adopt that policy... but because of the policy, I can't see myself CHOOSING to use Codeberg.

I don’t currently use LLMs for any significant part of my work but I’m not willing to put myself in a position where I might someday have to prove that something WASN'T written with an LLM because someone is making spurious accusations to troll or "DoS" a project.

It's unlikely to happen, but there are plenty of alternatives where this isn't a concern at all. Why open yourself or your projects to this?

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#107

Post by FireInsight »

VariousPrograms wrote: post #102

Should I be concerned that many of my hobby projects are little "one-off software [projects] specific to my need"? Is Codeberg only for hosting large, community-driven projects that require long-term support? I certainly "don't actually have a community" around my (hand-written) solo projects. Fair enough if Codeberg isn't the correct place for stupid little personal hobby projects, but that wasn't the sense I got wh…

My first push to Codeberg was 4 years ago. Back then I certainly got that they discourage small throwaway single-developer projects, and especially ones that are not FLOSS, and may exist only in the user's private repo. I pushed anyways, none of my projects took off, and they're basically just sitting there abandoned.

I get the feeling I should move the repos to my own Forgejo instance out of respect soon enough, but I'm certain they will not be deleted any time soon, at least not without me being notified of it. It's a community, not a corporation.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#108

Post by omnimus »

hamburgererror wrote: post #81
omnimus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if you require just public space for the project or if you also need the project to be part of social media network of Github. As "forge" Codeberg is pretty great. I use both Codeberg instance and my selfhosted Forgejo instance (the software behind codeberg) and have no problems with it.

What do you mean by "social media network of Github"?

Github is social network. People follow other peoples profiles, people discover projects using "explore", trending and star system.

Codeberg has some of these features but the networking effect there is pretty weak because there are way fewer people. Almost Every programmer is on Github.

Re: Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

#109

Post by sjs382 »

hamburgererror wrote: post #81
omnimus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if you require just public space for the project or if you also need the project to be part of social media network of Github. As "forge" Codeberg is pretty great. I use both Codeberg instance and my selfhosted Forgejo instance (the software behind codeberg) and have no problems with it.

What do you mean by "social media network of Github"?

Whether you're expecting to have contributors that all have GitHub accounts already. And whether you expect to use the network-effects (follows/stars/activity feed) to have your project be more discoverable.
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