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John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

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Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#371

Post by enraged_camel »

8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #342
skrebbel wrote: post #91

This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a license ("a gift"). That's of course great and awesome and super nice, but he's not been painstakingly and thanklessly maintaining some key linux component for the last 20 years or something like that. It's an entirely different thing; he made a thing, sold it, and then when he couldn't sell more of it, gave it away. That's nice! Bu…

> This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS It's a little disheartening that someone can release their code and still be told they "don't really do OSS".

It’s a pretty nasty form of No True Scotsman.

“I do open source. Oh, that guy? He doesn’t do real open source.”

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#372

Post by throwaway17_17 »

dismalaf wrote: post #361
layer8 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the essay? http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral... In it, the bazaar is a metaphor for how Linux was being developed.

Yes. Here's a relevant excerpt: > No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here — rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches (aptly symbolized by the Linux archive sites, which would take submissions from anyone) out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles. The fact that this bazaar style seemed to work,…

I always think about this section when I consider making my personal programming language public. I think if language development was, in 2026, happing the way ESR describes Linux here I might be more persuaded to release. But as it stands now, almost all modern language development is done in the rigid, semi-planned, hierarchical, and “cathedral”-esque development style.

The expectations for language developers is currently huge burden and a massive undertaking, even for small languages that look to publicize at nearly any level. The amount of users that seem to insist on participation in the language’s progress, semantics, or implementation is the vast majority of any online/vocal user base and those same voices seem to view languages with different development models as inherently toys.

I’m sure this is where I am expected to reference Rich Hickey’s comments/post about Clojure development, but I don’t have the link on mobile. But the discussions are legion and legendary at this point.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#373

Post by skybrian »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #46

In my mind, AI is making a lot of engineers, including Carmack, seem fairly thoughtless. At the other moments in recent history where technology has displaced workers, labor has either had to fight some very bloody battles or had stronger labor organization. Tech workers are highly atomized now, and if you have to work to live, you're negotiating on your own. It seems like Carmack, like a lot of tech people, have for…

Software engineers have been automating away workers' jobs from the beginning. "Computer" was once a job title. There were armies of switchboard operators at the phone company. Companies had typing pools, mail clerks, and file clerks. We write shell scripts and development tools to automate our own jobs.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#374

Post by throwaway17_17 »

anon-3988 wrote: post #334
socalgal2 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same attitude as Carmack. I have several libraries and sites I maintain as well as contributing to several popular open source projects. I still have his attitude about this. Both my open source and my ongoing maintenance are gifts. I'm also free to stop giving when I don't feel like it.

There's more to open source than just the code or output, it is also the community. There's apparenticeship, sharing of knowledge, sense of comradery, supporting each other, etc. My day job uses a lot of open source libraries and projects, and do you know what we do when we fix things? We fork internally and don't upstream any patches. Do you not see a loss here? With LLMs, there's even LESS reason to keep up with up…

I think your idealized list of attributes of “open source” is admirable. However, the apprenticeship, comradery, and support are a specific and often sought out feature of some development ‘communities’ for specific software. I’d also say that the ‘loss’ when fixes, updates, optimizations of open source software is not up-streamed is real, but this has very little to do with adopting or promoting the externalities (no matter how laudable) you want to see in certain software’s development.

I personally don’t care about the community, its composition, or its internal structure for a lot of software I use. Even when I’m compiling from source and customizing smaller applications for personal efficiency, I’m not usually interested in being a part of some distributed community centered on that software. Some times I am engaged in the community and appreciate it and the work required to maintain that community. But in either case, the software is “open source”.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#375

Post by Aeolun »

aeonfox wrote: post #338
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and Bigstrat2003 are arguing a technicality, and you're technically correct, but in context I think that's somewhat beside the point. Skrebbel and Layer8 are focused on the cultural associations of "open source" development, and this mismatch is causing everyone to talk past each other. The original post in this thread was: > This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a li…

More succinctly, Carmack only contributes his code to OSS, but not his time , and shouldn't impose his values on the wider community that contribute both. > technically correct, but in context I think that's somewhat beside the point Talking past people to argue on semantics and pedantry is a HN pastime. It may even be it's primary function.

Code gifted absolutely includes the time taken to write it.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#376

Post by shdh »

skrebbel wrote: post #91

This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a license ("a gift"). That's of course great and awesome and super nice, but he's not been painstakingly and thanklessly maintaining some key linux component for the last 20 years or something like that. It's an entirely different thing; he made a thing, sold it, and then when he couldn't sell more of it, gave it away. That's nice! Bu…

Quake III Arena is OSS

He doesn’t need to keep maintaining it

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#377

Post by Aeolun »

anon-3988 wrote: post #334
socalgal2 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same attitude as Carmack. I have several libraries and sites I maintain as well as contributing to several popular open source projects. I still have his attitude about this. Both my open source and my ongoing maintenance are gifts. I'm also free to stop giving when I don't feel like it.

There's more to open source than just the code or output, it is also the community. There's apparenticeship, sharing of knowledge, sense of comradery, supporting each other, etc. My day job uses a lot of open source libraries and projects, and do you know what we do when we fix things? We fork internally and don't upstream any patches. Do you not see a loss here? With LLMs, there's even LESS reason to keep up with up…

> There's more to open source than just the code or output, it is also the community. There's apparenticeship, sharing of knowledge, sense of comradery, supporting each other, etc.

No there is not. That’s what you impose on it. My code is open, free, and unencumbered. If I don’t want you using it you don’t see it at all. The licenses are there to make people happy.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#378

Post by bradleykingz »

Aeolun wrote: post #375
aeonfox wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More succinctly, Carmack only contributes his code to OSS, but not his time , and shouldn't impose his values on the wider community that contribute both. > technically correct, but in context I think that's somewhat beside the point Talking past people to argue on semantics and pedantry is a HN pastime. It may even be it's primary function.

Code gifted absolutely includes the time taken to write it.

case in point

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#379

Post by shdh »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #344
skrebbel wrote: post #91

This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a license ("a gift"). That's of course great and awesome and super nice, but he's not been painstakingly and thanklessly maintaining some key linux component for the last 20 years or something like that. It's an entirely different thing; he made a thing, sold it, and then when he couldn't sell more of it, gave it away. That's nice! Bu…

I mean back in the day licensing Quake from iD was like that too. It was basically "hey, thanks for the $2 million, here's your cdr and never contact us again." It was night and day between them and Epic back then, which I think is entirely why Unreal Engine grew to be such a juggernaut, and iD tech stagnated.

Megatexture was also subpar and overcomplicated

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#380

Post by deckar01 »

CrossVR wrote: post #49

There's one elephant in the room that's not being addressed: Training an AI on GPL code and then having it generate equivalent code that is released under a closed source license seems like a good way to destroy the copy-left FOSS ecosystem.

People were violating the terms of GPL without consequence long before AI. It is very difficult to determine if binaries were compiled from fragments of GPL code.

The places I have found AI most useful in coding is stripping away layers of abstraction. It is difficult to say as a long time open source contributor, but libraries often tried to cater to everyone and became slow, monolithic piles of abstraction. All the parts of an open source project that are copyrightable are abstraction. When you take away all the branching and make a script that performs all the side effects that some library would have produced for a specific set of args, you are left with something that is not novel. It’s quite liberating to stop fighting errors deep in some UVC driver, and just pull raw bytes from a USB device without a mountain of indirection from decades of irrelevant edge case handling.

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