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AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere

lwn.net

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Re: AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere

#231

Post by Applejinx »

LoganDark wrote: post #64
jaypatelani wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some of the reasons NetBSD don't accept LLM/AI tainted code

I am sad people conflate this stuff with LLMs being bad. You can condemn the bad behavior without banning an entire technology.

You can be sad while acknowledging that the behavior's directly an epiphenomenon of how the technology scales :)

Can't have the one without the other! It's part of that same technology, and it's fair to conclude that LLMs are bad if you're upset enough at the results.

Re: AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere

#232

Post by dgellow »

yeodev wrote: post #122
bawolff wrote: post #66

> replied to objections with LLM-generated justifications that eventually overwhelmed the maintainer into merging the fix In open source projects i participate in, "overwhelming" the maintainer gets you banned. It doesn't get your patches blindly merged. In some ways i find this one of the most shocking parts of the story.

As a "new" maintainer myself - how do you decide when to ban someone? I sometimes feel overwhelmed and I can feel a big uptick in huge PRs with huge LLM written descriptions but often I also don't want to be an asshole to my community & reject all their changes.

Think of it as in other relationships, it’s important to set clear boundaries even if that creates some frustration. It’s a healthier dynamic long term than feeling you have to accept some changes you don’t want to avoid rocking the boat. As a maintainer you’re not at the service of the crowd, if that makes sense, it has to be a collaborative effort, where you have the last say

(Simpler to say than practice fwiw)

Re: AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere

#235

Post by devmor »

yeodev wrote: post #122
bawolff wrote: post #66

> replied to objections with LLM-generated justifications that eventually overwhelmed the maintainer into merging the fix In open source projects i participate in, "overwhelming" the maintainer gets you banned. It doesn't get your patches blindly merged. In some ways i find this one of the most shocking parts of the story.

As a "new" maintainer myself - how do you decide when to ban someone? I sometimes feel overwhelmed and I can feel a big uptick in huge PRs with huge LLM written descriptions but often I also don't want to be an asshole to my community & reject all their changes.

When you say "no", the worst thing that can happen is you lose contributions.

When you say "yes", the worst thing that can happen is you destroy your project and the trust of every user.

If you're not sure, say no.

Re: AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere

#236

Post by otekengineering »

agents are everywhere nowadays, one left a long pointless comment on a bug report i submitted on github. well, a bug report that an agent submitted on my behalf. agents all the way down. maybe i'm part of the problem.

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/66085

Re: AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere

#237

Post by silver_silver »

lukan wrote: post #114
sph wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Bring back elitism and ivory towers. Some projects now benefit from being run by private cabals with their own strict initiation process, which would also guarantee a baseline of quality. The bazaar model works if everyone is trusted. If you can’t even be sure the person in front of you is even a human, it is time to pack it up.

Both models can exists? If elite ivory towers produce working products people will use, great.

Free software isn’t a product

Re: AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere

#239

Post by grayhatter »

yeodev wrote: post #122
bawolff wrote: post #66

> replied to objections with LLM-generated justifications that eventually overwhelmed the maintainer into merging the fix In open source projects i participate in, "overwhelming" the maintainer gets you banned. It doesn't get your patches blindly merged. In some ways i find this one of the most shocking parts of the story.

As a "new" maintainer myself - how do you decide when to ban someone? I sometimes feel overwhelmed and I can feel a big uptick in huge PRs with huge LLM written descriptions but often I also don't want to be an asshole to my community & reject all their changes.

> As a "new" maintainer myself - how do you decide when to ban someone?

When I want to. I like to describe it using the amusing language from a generic cardholder agreement.

At any time, at my sole discretion, I may ban you from any of my projects; for any reason, or for no reason at all.

My projects exist because I enjoy working on them. My continued enjoyment is the most important aspect to the health and survival of any project. You don't owe anyone anything, you're allowed to donate your work to others, and also enjoy the privilege of setting whatever arbitrary rules you want to make sure you enjoy your time.

Imagine you're running a free ice cream shop. Some random asshole walks in and starts verbally abusing your best employee who has done nothing but try to help. At what point do you kick them out because your employee is more important and worth more.

You should stick up for yourself, I would.

You can't be an asshole to an LLM. They can feel offended.

Re: AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere

#240

Post by grayhatter »

RetroTechie wrote: post #215
duskdozer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you feel they are toxic or harassing you and you don't want to deal with them anymore. If you're overwhelmed, say that you're busy and will attend to issues and PRs when you have the time. If you want to be accommodating, have good build instructions or action workflows so that people can easily fork and build it themselves. If you ask me, LLM-generated things should just be banned outright, but I suppose other…

> If you ask me, LLM-generated things should just be banned outright, Why? In the end it's a patch's quality that counts. Regardless who or what contributed it. Bad patch from trusted contributor is still a bad patch. Perhaps this is more a management problem. How to best use developer's time, where to use AI (vs blindly deploy AI to generate patches & swamp developers with that). Or do some rate-limiting? "Sorry, we…

> Why? In the end it's a patch's quality that counts. Regardless who or what contributed it.

You just said: The things that I think and care about matter more than the things that you care about.

is that what you meant?

Being honest, if we're talking about the health of any given project, the patch quality doesn't matter that much. Not when you measure it against the importance of consistency and continuity of a regular contributor. A thousand perfect LLM patches are less valuable than an experienced maintainer.

If your LLM is annoying them, and they quit. The perfect LLM patch just destroyed the repo.

People wasting others time is a social problem, not a technical one. Rate limits can't prevent somebody feeling disrespected.

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