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Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

gitlab.redox-os.org

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Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#151

Post by jacquesm »

electrosphere wrote: post #137
dakolli wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rely on llms, you're simply not going to make it. The person who showed their work on the math test is 9/10 times is doing better in life than the person that only knew how to use a calculator. Now how do we think things are going to turn out for the person that doesn't even think they need to learn how to use a calculator. Just like when people started losing their ability to navigate without a GPS/Maps app,…

I went into software because I like building things and coming up with solid solutions to business problems that are of use to society. I would not describe myself with "love to code". It's a means to an end to pay bills and have a meaningful career. I think of myself more like a carpenter or craftsman. I used a coding agent for the majority of my current project and I still got the "build stuff" itch scratched becau…

> I think of myself more like a carpenter or craftsman.

> I used a coding agent for the majority of my current project and I still got the "build stuff" itch scratched because Engineers are still responsible for the output and they are needed to interface between technical teams, UX, business people etc

Then you are the opposite of a carpenter or a craftsman, no matter what you think about it yourself.

Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#152

Post by wccrawford »

electrosphere wrote: post #137
dakolli wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rely on llms, you're simply not going to make it. The person who showed their work on the math test is 9/10 times is doing better in life than the person that only knew how to use a calculator. Now how do we think things are going to turn out for the person that doesn't even think they need to learn how to use a calculator. Just like when people started losing their ability to navigate without a GPS/Maps app,…

I went into software because I like building things and coming up with solid solutions to business problems that are of use to society. I would not describe myself with "love to code". It's a means to an end to pay bills and have a meaningful career. I think of myself more like a carpenter or craftsman. I used a coding agent for the majority of my current project and I still got the "build stuff" itch scratched becau…

I went into software because I love to code.

And yet, I find a coding agent makes it even more fun. I spend less time working on the boilerplate crap that I hate, and a lot less time searching Google and trying to make sense of a dozen half-arsed StackOverflow posts that don't quite answer my question.

I just went through that yesterday with Unity. I did all the leg work to figure out why something didn't work like I expected. Even Google's search engine agent wasn't answering the question. It was a terrible, energy-draining experience that I don't miss at all. I did figure it out in the end, though.

Prior to yesterday, I was thinking that using AIs to do that was making it harder for me to learn things because it was so easy. But comparing what I remember from yesterday to other things I did with the AI, I don't really think that. The AI lets me do it repeatedly, quickly, and I learn by the repetition, and a lot of it. The slow method has just 1 instance, and it takes forever.

This is certainly an exciting time for coders, no matter why they're in the game.

Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#153

Post by voidUpdate »

pmarreck wrote: post #94
yla92 wrote: post #82

Zig has a similar stance on no-LLM policy https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig#strict-no-llm-no-ai-policy

Yep, that’s why my forks of all their libraries with bugs fixed such as https://github.com/pmarreck/zigimg/commit/52c4b9a557d38fe1e1... will never ever go back to upstream, just because an LLM did it. Lame, but oh well- their loss. Also, this is dumb because anyone who wants fixes like this will have to find a fork like mine with them, which is an increased maintenance burden.

If you know there's a bug, why not just properly fix it and get it merged, instead of outsourcing that fix?

Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#154

Post by orf »

jacquesm wrote: post #148
orf wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just like... don't tell them a LLM did it?

That's a dick move because you are opening up an open source project to claims of infringement without recourse. Why on earth would you force stuff on a party that has said they don't want that?

Sure, but back in reality no you’re not? No more than any other contributor?

If I want to use an auto-complete then I can, and I will? Restricting that is as regressive as a project trying to specify that I write code from a specific country or… standing on my head.

Sure, if they want me to add a “I’m writing this standing on my head” message in the PR then I will… but I’m not.

Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#155

Post by Meneth »

lpcvoid wrote: post #103
pmarreck wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that’s why my forks of all their libraries with bugs fixed such as https://github.com/pmarreck/zigimg/commit/52c4b9a557d38fe1e1... will never ever go back to upstream, just because an LLM did it. Lame, but oh well- their loss. Also, this is dumb because anyone who wants fixes like this will have to find a fork like mine with them, which is an increased maintenance burden.

Hugely unpopular opinion on HN, but I'd rather use code that is flawed while written by a human, versus code that has been generated by a LLM, even if it fixes bugs. I'd gladly take a bug report, sure, but then I'd fix the issues myself. I'd never allow LLM code to be merged.

I agree.

Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#156

Post by advancespace »

ptnpzwqd wrote: post #6

I think this is a reasonable decision (although maybe increasingly insufficient). It doesn't really matter what your stance on AI is, the problem is the increased review burden on OSS maintainers. In the past, the code itself was a sort of proof of effort - you would need to invest some time and effort on your PRs, otherwise they would be easily dismissed at a glance. That is no longer the case, as LLMs can quickly g…

[flagged]

Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#157

Post by advancespace »

eyk19 wrote: post #37
ptnpzwqd wrote: post #6

I think this is a reasonable decision (although maybe increasingly insufficient). It doesn't really matter what your stance on AI is, the problem is the increased review burden on OSS maintainers. In the past, the code itself was a sort of proof of effort - you would need to invest some time and effort on your PRs, otherwise they would be easily dismissed at a glance. That is no longer the case, as LLMs can quickly g…

I feel like the pattern here is donate compute, not code. If agents are writing most of the software anyway, why deal with the overhead of reviewing other people's PRs? You're basically reviewing someone else's agent output when you could just run your own. Maintainers could just accept feature requests, point their own agents at them using donated compute, and skip the whole review dance. You get code that actually…

[dead]

Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#158

Post by advancespace »

konschubert wrote: post #93
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #20

I think we will be getting into an interesting situation soon, where project maintainers use LLMs because they truly are useful in many cases, but will ban contributors for doing so, because they can't review how well did the user guide the LLM.

The bottlenecks today are: * understanding the problem * modelling a solution that is consistent with the existing modelling/architecture of the software and moves modelling and architecture in the right direction * verifying that the the implementation of the solution is not introducing accidental complexity These are the things LLMs can't do well yet. That's where contributions will be most appreciated. Producing c…

[flagged]

Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#159

Post by lukaslalinsky »

konschubert wrote: post #93
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #20

I think we will be getting into an interesting situation soon, where project maintainers use LLMs because they truly are useful in many cases, but will ban contributors for doing so, because they can't review how well did the user guide the LLM.

The bottlenecks today are: * understanding the problem * modelling a solution that is consistent with the existing modelling/architecture of the software and moves modelling and architecture in the right direction * verifying that the the implementation of the solution is not introducing accidental complexity These are the things LLMs can't do well yet. That's where contributions will be most appreciated. Producing c…

I still think there is value in external contributors solving problems using LLMs, assuming they do the research and know what they are doing. Getting a well written and tested solution from LLM is not as easy as writing a good prompt, it's a much longer/iterative process.

Re: Redox OS has adopted a Certificate of Origin policy and a strict no-LLM policy

#160

Post by silverwind »

mixedbit wrote: post #115
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #20

I think we will be getting into an interesting situation soon, where project maintainers use LLMs because they truly are useful in many cases, but will ban contributors for doing so, because they can't review how well did the user guide the LLM.

If an author of a PR just generated code with an LLM, the GitHub PR becomes an incredibly inefficient interface between a repository owner and the LLM. A much better use of the owner time would be to interact with LLM directly instead of responding to LLM generated PR, waiting for updates, responding again, etc.

Yep, the indirection through the PR author is almost always inefficient and error-prone unless the author is really knowledgable about the code (many aren't).
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