qq
Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
261–270 of 427 posts
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#262Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…
People sometimes miss that copyleft is powered by copyright. Copyleft (which means Linux, Blender, and plenty of other goodness) needs the ability to impose some rules on what users do with your work, presumably in the interest of common good. Such ability implies IP ownership.
This does not mean that powerful interests abusing copyright with ever increasing terms and enforcement overreach is fair game. It harms common interest.
However, it does mean that abusing copyright from the other side and denouncing the core ideas of IP ownership—which is now sort of in the interest of certain companies (and capital heavily invested in certain fashionable but not yet profitable startups) based around IP expropriation—harms common interest just as well.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you show these 3 things to us?
For some reason these fully functional ai generated projects that the authors vibe out while playing guitar and clipping their toenails are never open source.
Here's Armin Ronacher describing his open-source "sloppy XML" parser that he had AI write with his guidance from this week: https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2025/6/21/my-first-ai-library/
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the contrary. IANAL, but this is my understanding of the law (setting aside the "work for hire" thing for simplicity) 1. If you come up with something completely new, you are the sole copyright holder. 2. If you take someone else's copyrighted work and transform it, then both of you have a copyright on the derivative work. So if you write a brand new comic book that includes Darth Vader, you can't sell that withou…
Doesn’t this also mean that if you transform the work created by Midjourney, you now have a copyright on the transformed work? I wonder what counts for transformed, is a filter enough or does it have to be more than that?
That's my understanding, yes. "What counts as transformed" is fuzzy, but it's an old well-established problem with hundreds of years of case law.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Proprietary source code would not usually end up training LLMs. Unless its leaked, how would an LLM have access to it? > it would require speculative copyright owners to disassemble their binaries I wonder whether AI might be a useful tool for making that easier. If you have evidence then you can get courts to order disclosure or examination of code. > And plenty of proprietary software has public domain code in it a…
> Unless its leaked Given the number of people on HN that say they're using for e.g. Cursor, OpenAI, etc. through work, and my experience with workplaces saying 'absolutely you can't use it', I suspect a large amount is being leaked.
I thought most of these did not use users context and input for training?
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to review code the author doesn't understand This really bothers me. I've had people ask me to do some task except they get AI to provide instructions on how to do the task and send me the instructions, rather than saying "Hey can you please do X". It's insulting.
Had someone higher up ask about something in my area of expertise. I said I didn't think is was possible, he followed up with a chatGPT conversation he had where it "gave him some ideas that we could use as an approach", as if that was some useful insight. This is the same people that think that "learning to code" is a translation issue they don't have time for as opposed to experience they don't have.
Reminds me of "Appeal to Aithority". (not a typo)
An LLM said it, so it must be true.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#267Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…
People sometimes miss that copyleft is powered by copyright. Copyleft (which means Linux, Blender, and plenty of other goodness) needs the ability to impose some rules on what users do with your work, presumably in the interest of common good. Such ability implies IP ownership. This does not mean that powerful interests abusing copyright with ever increasing terms and enforcement overreach is fair game. It harms comm…
While this is a generally true statement (and has echoes in other areas like sovereign citizens), GenAI may make copyright (and copyleft) economically redundant.
While the AI we have now is not good enough to make an entire operating system when asked*, if/when they can, the benefits of all the current licensing models evaporate, and it doesn't matter if that model is proprietary with no source, or GPL, or MIT, because by that point anyone else can reproduce your OS for whatever the cost of tokens is without ever touching your code.
But as we're not there yet, I agree with @benlivengood that (most**) OSS projects must treat GenAI code as if it's unusable.
* At least, not a modern OS. I've not tried getting any model to output a tiny OS that would fit in a C64, and while I doubt they can currently do this, it is a bet I might lose, whereas I am confident all models would currently fail at e.g. reproducing Windows XP.
** I think MIT licensed projects can probably use GenAI code, they're not trying to require derivatives to follow the same licence, but I'm not a lawyer and this is just my barely informed opinion from reading the licenses.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only the simplest one is open (and before you discount it as too trivial, somehow none of the other ones did what I wanted) https://github.com/viraptor/pomodoro The others are just too specific for me to be useful for anyone else: an android app for automatic processing of some text messages and a work scheduling/prioritising thing. The time to make them generic enough to share would be much longer than creating my s…
> The time to make them generic enough to share would be much longer than creating my specific version in the first place Welcome to the reality of software development. "Works on my machine" is often not good enough to make the cut.
It doesn't matter that my thing doesn't generalise if someone can build their own customised solution quickly. But also, if I wanted to sell it or distribute it, I'd ensure it was more generic from the beginning.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only the simplest one is open (and before you discount it as too trivial, somehow none of the other ones did what I wanted) https://github.com/viraptor/pomodoro The others are just too specific for me to be useful for anyone else: an android app for automatic processing of some text messages and a work scheduling/prioritising thing. The time to make them generic enough to share would be much longer than creating my s…
> and before you discount it as too trivial, somehow none of the other ones did what I wanted No offense, it's really great that you are able to make apps that do exactly what you want, but your examples are not very good to show that "software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will not be competitive with AI assisted or written projects" (as someone else suggested above). Complex real world software is…
Cut it out with patronising, I work with complex software, which is why I specifically mentioned the only example I published was simple.
> but your examples are not very good to show that "software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will not be competitive with AI assisted or written projects"
Here's the thing though - it's already the case, because I wouldn't create those tools but hand otherwise. I just don't have the time, and they're too personal/edge-case to pay anyone to make them. So the comparison in this case is between 100% human developed non-existent software and AI generated project which exists. The latter wins in every category by default.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going by the standard of "But there are also local tools generated faster than you could adjust existing tools to do what you want", here's a random one of mine that's in regular use by my wife: https://github.com/TeMPOraL/qr-code-generator Built with Aider and either Sonnet 3.5 or Gemini 2.5 Pro (I forgot to note that down in this project), and recently modified with Claude Code because I had to test it on something…
Your QR generator is actually a project written by humans repackaged: https://github.com/neocotic/qrious All the hard work was made by humans. I can do `npm install` without having to pay for AI, thanks.
I am reminded of a meme about musicians. Not well enough to find it, but it was something like this:
Real musicians don’t mix loops they bought.
Real musicians make their own synth patches.
Real musicians build their own instruments.
Real musicians hand-forge every metal component in their instruments.
…
They say real musicians raise goats for the leather for the drum-skins, but I wouldn't know because I haven’t made any music in months and the goats smell funny.
1) even though most of people on here know what npm is, many of us are not web developers and don't really know how to turn a random package into a useful webapp.
2) The AI is faster than googling a finished product that already exists, not just as an NPM package, but as a complete website.
Especially because search results require you to go through all the popups everyone stuffs everywhere because cookies, ads, before you even find out if it was actually a scam where the website you went to first doesn't actually do the right thing (or perhaps *anything*) anyway.
It is also, for many of us, the same price: free.