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Node.js needs a virtual file system

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Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#221

Post by habinero »

UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #182
crote wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. Whether AI output can fall under copyright at all is still up for debate - with some early rulings indicating that the fact that you prompted the AI does not automatically grant you authorship. Even if it does, it hasn't been settled yet what the impact of your AI having been trained on copyrighted material is on its output. You can make a not-completely-unreasonable argument that AI inference output…

This is not how law works. Stop pretending that you’re a lawyer. You do not “always assume the worst”. Stop giving legal advice. You’re very clearly a developer in over his head. Law is not an engineering problem. Legislation is not a technical specification. Christ.

No, they're absolutely correct, and they're not saying either of those things. They're pointing out an enormous hidden risk. Yanno, like an engineer is supposed to do.

You don't have a license because it's what all the cool kids are doing, you have one in case shit goes sideways and someone decides to try and ruin your day. You do, in fact, have to assume the worst.

The "nuke" here is some litigious company -- let's call them Patent Troll Rebranded (PTR) -- discovers that the LLM reproduced large amounts of their copyrighted code. Or it claims to have discovered it. They have large amounts of money and lawyers to fight it out in court and you are a relatively shoestring language foundation.

Either you have to unwind years of development to remove the offending code or you're spending six figures or more to defend yourself in court, all because you didn't bother to anticipate things that are anticipatable.

Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#222

Post by Retr0id »

socalgal2 wrote: post #144

What's special about node.js here? Does golang, C#, python, ruby, java, etc... have a virtual file system? I get it, I've implemented things for tests, I'm just wondering if this shouldn't be solved at an OS level. --- update Let's put this another way, my code does effectively, child_process.spawn('something-that-reads-and-write-a-file') now I'm back to the same issue. To test I need a virtual file system. Node prov…

Python doesn't have a virtual filesystem in general but it is possible to shim the import mechanism.

Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#223

Post by habinero »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #98
crote wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. Whether AI output can fall under copyright at all is still up for debate - with some early rulings indicating that the fact that you prompted the AI does not automatically grant you authorship. Even if it does, it hasn't been settled yet what the impact of your AI having been trained on copyrighted material is on its output. You can make a not-completely-unreasonable argument that AI inference output…

Why write open-source software at all, when the government could outlaw open-source entirely? What if an asteroid destroys Earth and there are no humans left to enjoy your work? At some point, you have to agree that a risk isn't worth worrying about. And your "worst possible outcome" is just the arbitrary outcome that you think has some subjective risk threshold. And it's certainly not one I agree with. Furthermore,…

> And it's certainly not one I agree with

Well, it's a good thing you're not on the hook for defending against it, then.

Like I said in another comment, you don't have a license just because they're cool and look neat. You have them specifically to guard against people like patent trolls, who are trying to wreck your shit and take your lunch money. It's not an abstract risk.

Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#224

Post by AndyKelley »

I used Node.js extensively for about a decade, both professionally and as a hobby. I don't buy the problem statement.

These arguments don't even make sense, they look LLM generated. I can't even formulate a disagreement against this nonsense.

Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#225

Post by lmm »

mpyne wrote: post #198
dakiol wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants to review AI-generated code (unless we are paid for doing so). Open source is fun, that's why people do it for free... adding AI to the mix is just insulting to some, and boring to others. Like, why on earth would I spent hours reviewing your PR that you/Claude took 5 minutes to write? I couldn't care less if it improves (best case scenario) my open source codebase, I simply don't enjoy the imbalance.

> Like, why on earth would I spent hours reviewing your PR that you/Claude took 5 minutes to write? If the PR does what it says it does, why does it actually matter if it took 2 weeks or 2 minutes to put together, given that it's the equivalent level of quality on review?

> If the PR does what it says it does, why does it actually matter if it took 2 weeks or 2 minutes to put together, given that it's the equivalent level of quality on review?

You're right that the issue isn't how many minutes it took. The issue is that it's slop. Reviewing thousands of lines of crappy code is unpleasant whether they were autogenerated or painstakingly handcrafted. (Of course, few humans have the patience and resistance to learning to generate the amount of terrible code that AIs do routinely).

Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#226

Post by lmm »

hackemmy wrote: post #176
dakiol wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants to review AI-generated code (unless we are paid for doing so). Open source is fun, that's why people do it for free... adding AI to the mix is just insulting to some, and boring to others. Like, why on earth would I spent hours reviewing your PR that you/Claude took 5 minutes to write? I couldn't care less if it improves (best case scenario) my open source codebase, I simply don't enjoy the imbalance.

I get the frustration but I think this take only holds if you assume AI generated code is inherently worse. If someone uses Claude to scaffold the boilerplate and then actually goes through it properly, the end result is the same code you would have written by hand, just faster. The real problem is when people submit 14k lines they clearly did not read through. But that is a review process problem, not an AI problem.…

Yes and no. Previously when someone submitted a 14k line PR you could be assured that they'd at least put a significant amount of time and effort into it, and the result was usually a certain floor on the quality level. Now that's no longer true.

Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#227

Post by lmm »

tyre wrote: post #143
dakiol wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants to review AI-generated code (unless we are paid for doing so). Open source is fun, that's why people do it for free... adding AI to the mix is just insulting to some, and boring to others. Like, why on earth would I spent hours reviewing your PR that you/Claude took 5 minutes to write? I couldn't care less if it improves (best case scenario) my open source codebase, I simply don't enjoy the imbalance.

Why do you care how much effort it took the engineer to make it? If there was a huge amount of tedium that they used Claude Code for, then reviewed and cleaned up so that it’s indistinguishable from whatever you’d expect from a human; what’s it to you? Not everyone has the same motivations. I’ve done open source for fun, I’ve done it to unblock something at work, I’ve done it to fix something that annoys me. If your…

> Why do you care how much effort it took the engineer to make it?

Because they're implicitly asking me to put in effort as a reviewer. Pretending that they put more effort in than they have is extremely rude, and intentionally or not, generating a large volume of code amounts to misleading your potential reviewers.

> If there was a huge amount of tedium that they used Claude Code for, then reviewed and cleaned up so that it’s indistinguishable from whatever you’d expect from a human; what’s it to you?

They never do though. These kind of imaginary good AI-based workflows are a "real communism has never been tried" thing.

> If your project is gaining useful functionality, that seems like a win.

Lines of code impose a maintenance cost, and that goes triple when the code quality is low (as is always the case for actually existing AI-generated code). The cost is probably higher than the benefit.

Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#228

Post by lmm »

syrusakbary wrote: post #119
indutny wrote: post #29

Taking the question of whether this would be a useful addition to Node.js core or aside, it must be noted that this 19k LoC PR was mostly generated by Claude Code and manually reviewed by the submitter which in my opinion is against the spirit of the project and directly violates the terms of Developer's Certificate of Origin set in the project's CONTRIBUTING.md

Fully disagree with this take. Not allowing AI assistance on PRs will likely decimate the project in the future, as it will not allow fast iteration speeds compared to other alternatives. Note aside, OpenJS executive director mentioned it's ok to use AI assistance on Node.js contributions: I checked with legal and the foundation is fine with the DCO on AI-assisted contributions. We’ll work on getting this documented.…

> Not allowing AI assistance on PRs will likely decimate the project in the future, as it will not allow fast iteration speeds compared to other alternatives.

If and when there is evidence that AI is actually increasing the speed of improvement (and not just churn), it would make sense to permit it. Unless and until such evidence emerges, the risks greatly outweigh the benefits, at least for a foundational codebase like this.

Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#229

Post by lmm »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #131
indutny wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The submitted code must adhere to either of (a), (b), (c), and separately a (d) clause of: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#dev... If submitter picks (a) they assert that they wrote the code themselves and have right to submit it under project's license. If (b) the code was taken from another place with clear license terms compatible with the project's license. If (c) contribution was written…

If there's a "the original" the LLM is copying then there's a problem. If there isn't, then (b) works fine, the code is taken from the LLM with no preexisting license. And it would be very strange if a mix of (a) and (b) is a problem; almost any (b) code will need some (a) code to adapt it.

> the code is taken from the LLM with no preexisting license

That's not good enough to comply with (b). The code must be specifically covered by an open-source license, it's not enough for it to just not have a license.

Re: Node.js needs a virtual file system

#230

Post by [deleted] »

indutny wrote: post #29

Taking the question of whether this would be a useful addition to Node.js core or aside, it must be noted that this 19k LoC PR was mostly generated by Claude Code and manually reviewed by the submitter which in my opinion is against the spirit of the project and directly violates the terms of Developer's Certificate of Origin set in the project's CONTRIBUTING.md

[deleted]
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