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SDL bans AI-written commits

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21–30 of 145 posts

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#21

> 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…

> I don't scoff at people eating meat, let them be.

Why not let the animals be?

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#22
post #5

While this is a perfectly fine policy in the space of possible policies (it's probably what I'd pick, for what it's worth) the arguments being given for it leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Same. Plenty of perfectly valid reasons to outright ban generated PRs, but "Look, I asked ChatGPT to generate a PR which would break SDL, and it did not bother reading AGENTS.md" is a pretty weak take - gotta know thy enemy a little bit better than that.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#23
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…

> 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.

The Eternal September eventually comes for us all.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#24

> 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…

The "humans do it, too" or "humans have always done it" arguments break down very quickly.

Not only by comparing the scale of infringement, but because direct Stackoverflow snippets are very rare. For example, C++ snippets are 95% code cleverness monstrosities and you can only learn a principle but not use the code directly.

I'd say that Stackoverflow snippets in well maintained open source projects are practically zero. I've never seen any PR that is accepted that would even trigger that suspicion.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#25
post #13
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.

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

That's just Virtue signaling.

"AI-improved" projects like "rewrite $FOO in rust" are popping up everywhere. I dont support it, sqlite3 being rewritten in rust makes me just sad https://turso.tech/blog/introducing-limbo-a-complete-rewrite..., but this "$PROJECT bans AI" is just ridiculous. Ideally we should try to use it for the good, instead of ban it.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#26
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…

TinyCC's mob branch on repo.or.cz just got trolled with AI commits today. Nowhere is safe it seems.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#27

> 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...

Most SO snippets likely aren't unique or creative enough to count as works. If a hundred programmers would write essentially the same snippet to solve a problem, it's not copyrightable.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#28

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…

>reviewed by humans can be perfectly good, maintainable, and indistinguishable from regular old code

That depends on the 'regular old code' but most stuff I have seen doesn't come close to 'maintainable'. The amount of cruft is proper.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#29
post #14
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...

there is no misconception here. Bug fixes, issue triage and feature implementation reduced time is a thing.

Re: SDL bans AI-written commits

#30

tbh if the change works and the code is ok who cares what was used to build it? ChatGPT or C++ code generator. If the code looks crap - reject PR, why drama?

From a less self-centered viewpoint there are plenty of reasons to be critical of LLMs and their use.
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