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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

#371

Post by jplusequalt »

slibhb wrote: post #258
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,…

> 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 Sure but once you learn long multiplication/division algorithms by hand there's not much point in using them. By high school everyone is using a calculator. > Just like when people started losing their ability to navigate without a GPS/Maps app Are you suggesting people shou…

>I don't think "LLMs making us dumber" is a real concern. Yes, people will lose some skills. Before calculators, adults were probably way better at doing arithmetic.

But it's a problem of scale.

Calculators are very specific tools. If you are trying to run a computation of some arithmetic/algebraic expression, then they are a great tool. But they're not going to get you far if you need help understanding how to file your taxes.

LLMs are multi-faceted tools. They can help with math, doing taxes, coding, doing research, writing essays, summarizing text, etc. Basically anything that can be condensed into an embedding that the LLM can work with is fair game.

If you're willing to accept that using a tool slowly erodes the skill that tool was made for, then you should also accept that you will see an erosion of MANY skill you currently have.

So the question is whether this is all worth it? Is an increase in productivity worth eroding a strong foundation of general purpose knowledge? Perhaps even the ability to learn in the first place?

I would argue no a million times over, but I'm starting to think that I'm an outlier.

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

#372

Post by Qwertious »

logicprog wrote: post #358
short_sells_poo wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a human to be able to do any customization, they have to dive into the code and work with it, understand it, gain intuition for it. Engage with the maintainers and community. In the process, there's a good chance that they'll be encouraged to contribute improvements upstream even if they have their own fork. Vibe coders don't have to do any of this. They don't have to understand anything, they can just have their…

> Vibe coders don't have to do any of this. They don't have to understand anything, they can just have their LLMs do some modifications that are completely opaque to the vibe coder. I spend time using my agent to better understand existing codebases and their best practices than I'd ever have the time/energy to do before, giving me a broader and more holistic view on whatever I'm changing, before I make a change.

Okay, but you don't have to - and "efficient" coders won't bother, thus starving the commons.

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

#373

Post by decidu0us9034 »

scotty79 wrote: post #77

I see a lot of oss forks in the future where people just fork to fix their issues with LLMs without going through maintainers. Or even doing full LLM rewrites of smaller stuff.

Well it's an operating system. Ideally safety and reliability are prioritized. I think the scope and complexity of an operating system are large enough both to make a lot of changes non-trivial and to trip up LLMs. I think it's fine if you have an unstable release stream or you have bleeding edge forks that move faster than upstream. This is already the case...

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

#374

Post by hunterpayne »

logicprog wrote: post #362
FridgeSeal wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We, agentic coders, can easily enough fork their project and add whatever the features Bold of you to assume that people won’t move (and their code along with it) to spaces where parasitic behaviour like this doesn’t occur, locking you out. In addition to just being a straight-up rude, disrespectful and parasite position to take, you’re effectively poisoning your own well.

Since when is maintaining a personal patch set / fork parasitic? And in what way does it harm them, such that they should move to spaces where it doesn't happen, as a result? Also, isn't the entire point of open source precisely to enable people to make and use modifications of code if they want even if they don't want to hand code over? Also, that would be essentially making code closed source — do you think OSS is…

Its only parasitic if you are tricking users into thinking you are the original or providing something better. You could be providing something different (which would be valuable) but if you are not, you are just scamming users for your own benefit.

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

#375

Post by timando »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #170
jacquesm wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My rules of thumb is much shorter: don't. The open source world has already been ripped off by AI the last thing they need is for AI to pollute the pedigree of the codebase.

Suppose almost all work in the future is done via LLMs, just like almost all transportation is done today via cars instead of horses. Do you think your worldview is still a reasonable one under those conditions?

I don't see any cars racing in the Melbourne Cup.

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

#377

Post by filleduchaos »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #321
cptroot wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find the luddites to be a more informative historical analogy. A new tool arrives in an industry staffed by craftsmen, providing capital a lever to raise profits at the expense of quality. Is it surprising that worker co-ops would choose not to pull that lever?

The mistake here with both the Luddites and this is to mistake the tool for the actual problem (depending on where you sit), which is mechanization and automation and ultimately capitalism itself. Opposing the machine does/did nothing. Political organizing around unions, state regulations of the labour market, agitational political parties did (and can again).

Political organizing around unions, state regulations of the labour market, and agitational political parties did nothing to prevent the severe decline of clothing quality that was the Luddites were advocating against. But of course, propaganda has very successfully reduced their entire platform to "worker's pay" alone, which is an even easier line to feed to people that over the decades have become accustomed to literal slop as apparel. And I mean that very literally - clothes that straight-up lose their structural integrity after a handful of laundry cycles.

Of course, there's definitely absolutely nothing about the state of the garment industry that's applicable to the current discussions about AI re: software quality and worker compensation. It's not as if this industry has not already seen its fair share of quality going to the dogs with only a small handful of people still knowing and caring enough to call it out while most others cheer for the Productivity™.

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

#378

Post by h3lp »

Terr_ wrote: post #361
h3lp wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of computer users are domain experts in something like chemistry or physics or material science. Computing to them is just a tool in their field, e.g. simulating molecular dynamics, or radiation transfer. They dot every i and cross every t _in_their_competency_domain_, but the underlying code may be a horrible FORTRAN mess. LLMs potentially can help them write modern code using modern libraries and tooling. My…

The difference is that compilers involve rules we can enumerate, adjust, etc. Consider calculators: Their consistency and adherence to requirements was necessary for adoption. Nobody would be using them if they gave unpredictable wrong answers, or where calculations involving 420 and 69 somehow keep yielding 5318008. (To be read upside-down, of course.)

The compilers used to be unreliable too, e.g. at higher optimizations and such. People worked on them and they got better.

I think LLMs will get better, as well.

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

#379

Post by joquarky »

ndriscoll wrote: post #272
lkjdsklf wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But all work isn't done by LLMs at the moment and we can't be sure that it will be so the question is ridiculous. Maybe one day it will be.. And then people can reevaluate their stance then. Until that time, it's entirely reasonable to hold the position that you just don't This is especially true with how LLM generated code may affect licensing and other things. There's a lot of unknowns there and it's entirely reaso…

Basically all of my actual programming work has been done by LLMs since January. My team actually demoed a PoC last week to hook up Codex to our Slack channel to become our first level on-call, and in the case of a defect (e.g. a pagerduty alert, or a question that suggests something is broken), go debug, push a fix for review, and suggest any mitigations. Prior to that, I basically pushed for my team to do the same…

> It's clear that doing it by hand would mostly be because you enjoy the process.

This will not happen until companies decide to care about quality again. They don't want employees spending time on anything "extra" unless it also makes them significantly more money.

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

#380

Post by hunterpayne »

swiftcoder wrote: post #132
pmarreck wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how in the heck do you disambiguate a first time long term contributor and a first time drive by contributor?

Mostly by whether they check in first to see if the fix is actually welcome? Drive-by folks tend to blindly fix the issue they care about, without regard to how/whether it fits into the overall project direction

I've seen both ways. Sometimes the contributors let their ego prevent improvements to the architecture. Recently, I tried to get rid of a bug farm in a library I use. A single function was reduced to 1 line that depended on far more reliable method. And the maintainers put it back in later on (breaking my app yet again, sigh). In all fairness, those maintainers are academics who work for the French government so probably not the best representation of the community but still.
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