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I'm Archiving Picocrypt

github.com

121–130 of 159 posts

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#121
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a good opportunity to remember that MIT is not a strong enough open source license, and if you want to prevent corporations making money off your work, make it AGPL or even SSPL, plus a statement that AI training creates a derivative work (the latter may or may not have any legal effect). MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations. With a stronger license, at least they're more likely to contribute…

Alternatively MIT does exactly what it says it does. It's up to you as an author whether you like those terms or if you'd prefer GPL, AGPL, or SSPL. If you want a permissive license MIT is perfectly reasonable. If you want more restrictions or stronger copy-left then don't pick MIT.

As far as I was able to tell, every single coding LLM out there still violates the terms of the MIT license, because the license requires attribution - and LLMs rarely (if ever?) provide any.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively MIT does exactly what it says it does. It's up to you as an author whether you like those terms or if you'd prefer GPL, AGPL, or SSPL. If you want a permissive license MIT is perfectly reasonable. If you want more restrictions or stronger copy-left then don't pick MIT.

As far as I was able to tell, every single coding LLM out there still violates the terms of the MIT license, because the license requires attribution - and LLMs rarely (if ever?) provide any.

I've not used AI to program and have very little interest in using AI to program, but I fail to see how laundering code through massive probabilistic lossy compression (silicon) should be treated any differently than laundering code through massive probabilistic lossy compression (biological). Should humans have to keep track of which software codebases they learn each pattern from, too?

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#123
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When are we getting a GPLv4 that's AGPL + no LLM training? This is overdue.

"Adversarial Internet" => if it touches the internet it's no longer yours. See a previous comment chain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44616163

> if it touches the internet it's no longer yours

*Unless you're a member of the capital class, in terms of being a corporation or a wealthy individual, who can then make our two-tiered justice system work for you. As Disney is seemingly looking to do. Then it will absolutely work for you.

This is why I and people like me so often say "there is no war but the class war." Arguing about copyright misses the entire point: The law serves the large stakeholders in the system, not the people. The only thing that's changed is there is now a large stakeholder of whom a core pillar of their ongoing business is the theft of data at industrial scale which happens to include data of other large stakeholders which is why we're now seeing the slap fight.

By all means enjoy it, it's very entertaining watching these people twist themselves into knots to explain why it's okay for Nintendo to sue people into the ground for distributing copies of games they no longer sell in any capacity but simultaneously it's okay for OpenAI to steal absolutely goddamned everything on the grounds that nothing has been "really" taken due to being infinitely replicable, or because it's a public research org, or whatever flimsy excuse is being employed at the time.

As it has been from the beginning, my position is: whatever the rule we decide on, it should apply to everyone. A very simple statement on very basic ethics that seems to make a lot of people very angry for some reason.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#124
post #79
post #65

I've felt similar to the author, a sort of despair that the only point of writing software now is to prop up the valuation of AI companies, that quality no longer matters, etc. Then I realized that nothings stopping me from writing software how I want and feel is best . I've stopped using LLMs completely and couldn't be happier. I'm not even struggling at work or feeling like I'm behind. I work on a number of persona…

This is also a good opportunity to remember that MIT is not a strong enough open source license, and if you want to prevent corporations making money off your work, make it AGPL or even SSPL, plus a statement that AI training creates a derivative work (the latter may or may not have any legal effect). MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations. With a stronger license, at least they're more likely to contribute…

> MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations.

No, MIT is a donation of your labor to the public. That includes corporations, yes, but it is not only corporations.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the author is abandoning software because in his opinion due to AI explosion employers don't care anymore about code quality and only quality. I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense. Imo, what happened is that he took the opportunity of him entering academia to vent some stuff and quit maintaining his project.

> I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense. Yes, making software development cheaper has been the main priority of the industry for a long time. The new development is that there's now a magic "do what I want" button that obviously won't quite do what you want but it's so cheap (for corporations, not humanity...) that you might as well pretend it does…

I've been a web application developer for nearly 30 years now. I care about the craft and discipline immensely. Then you pull up something like the Jack-In-The-Box menu site and fully realize that managers/executives don't give a damn if the stuff works well... 48MB of built JS?!? My daughter expressed how badly the site was working on her phone, and I got curious.

What's funny, is some will say, "use the app" instead for things like this... why should I trust someone to build a safe/secure app, who cannot build a reasonably functional website?

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#126
post #6

LLMs are glorified "LMGTFY" tools. AI assistance doesn't make people experts at anything. Some genz vibe coder isn't getting your job guys calm the heck down.

> Some genz vibe coder isn't getting your job guys calm the heck down. Then why isn't the software job market recovering

With the .com crashes through 2000 and 2001, it wasn't until well after 2005-2008 until pay had started to come back up, and still without the crazy signing bonuses. We're still in the down trend, and the industry is bigger today, so longer/larger impact.

Not only that, but it's pushing market rates down significantly. I'm making about 60% of what I made the past few years... I could only handle not having income for so long. I was juggling two jobs for a while, but just couldn't manage it. Hoping to pick up some side work to fill the gaps. Have to face it, a lot of the high pay contract software jobs have just dried up for now.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#127
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a good opportunity to remember that MIT is not a strong enough open source license, and if you want to prevent corporations making money off your work, make it AGPL or even SSPL, plus a statement that AI training creates a derivative work (the latter may or may not have any legal effect). MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations. With a stronger license, at least they're more likely to contribute…

> MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations. No, MIT is a donation of your labor to the public. That includes corporations, yes, but it is not only corporations.

I always found this stance puzzling. If the point of open source is to give your code to the public, why do people get upset when corporations do exactly what you told them they could do?

If you didn't want to give it to everyone, you shouldn't have chosen that license.

And if you choose a non-commercial license, people get upset that it's "not technically open source because the OSI says so" as if they are somehow the arbiter of this (or even should be). It's not like anyone owns the trademark to the term "open source" for software either.

Ironically, I've seen a lot of people in the last several years quit open source entirely and/or switch to closed source.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#128
post #108

I'm starting to feel kinda old and out of the loop. Could someone please explain the conversational style of this post? It begins with a prompt directed at Gemini, followed by what appears to be an AI-generated response. Are these actual AI responses or is the developer writing their parting message in a whimsical way? I'm genuinely confused. Help much appreciated!

This is a post framed in medias res, from the perspective of the developer, as portrayed by themselves, asking an LLM to construct the post that they post immediately afterwards. I'm unsure if the post is actually created by Gemini or the developer's imitation. I suspect the latter.

It is also a demonstration of what he is frustrated with what software development is becoming.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#129
post #79
post #65

I've felt similar to the author, a sort of despair that the only point of writing software now is to prop up the valuation of AI companies, that quality no longer matters, etc. Then I realized that nothings stopping me from writing software how I want and feel is best . I've stopped using LLMs completely and couldn't be happier. I'm not even struggling at work or feeling like I'm behind. I work on a number of persona…

This is also a good opportunity to remember that MIT is not a strong enough open source license, and if you want to prevent corporations making money off your work, make it AGPL or even SSPL, plus a statement that AI training creates a derivative work (the latter may or may not have any legal effect). MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations. With a stronger license, at least they're more likely to contribute…

> MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations.

Unless you are willing to spend yourself into financial ruin pursuing legal action against some faceless megacorp - it literally doesn't matter what license you use.

I've lived enough to know there is "what should be" and then there is what actually happens in reality. We don't live in a reality where everyone just does things out of the goodness of their heart...

Adding some text to your project, hosted on a public website for all to see means some people will take your code regardless of the license or your intent - and, realistically, what are you going to do about it? Nothing...

So... please, let's get off this GPL high-horse. It's not some end-all-be-all holy text that solves all of the world's problems.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#130
> I originally intended to work in the software engineering industry, but seeing the complete disregard for high quality code, overpowering greed and hype, and the layoffs that follow from it

Replace "software engineering" with literally anything and this is a true statement since the dawn of civilization.

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