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Protestware for coding agents

nesbitt.io

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41–50 of 141 posts

Re: Protestware for coding agents

#41

Post by gbanfalvi »

helloplanets wrote: post #40
kioleanu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it malware tho? Do you not check the output your agents produce?

This isn't about me in any way. If something in your software is intentionally malicious or damaging, it's malware. Doesn't really matter what the reasoning for including the malicious part is. Would you count this as malware if it was about the author trying to profit or steal from inattentive people using AI? You know, he could be putting those stolen goods towards a good cause, like Robin Hood.

> If something in your software is intentionally malicious or damaging, it's malware.

Seems to me like the library functions as it should. It behaves like a property testing library: it tests properties.

Re: Protestware for coding agents

#42

Post by fwlr »

I disapprove of this action by the jqwik owner, but I also disapprove of commentary classifying it as “malware”, “malicious code”, or similar.

By running an agent, you are turning plain text into an executable. This has great benefits for you, but (as with all great power) it comes with some added risks too. Please remain wary of externalizing these risks onto plain text authors by creating an expectation that all plain text is pseudo-executable.

Re: Protestware for coding agents

#43

Post by kioleanu »

helloplanets wrote: post #40
kioleanu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it malware tho? Do you not check the output your agents produce?

This isn't about me in any way. If something in your software is intentionally malicious or damaging, it's malware. Doesn't really matter what the reasoning for including the malicious part is. Would you count this as malware if it was about the author trying to profit or steal from inattentive people using AI? You know, he could be putting those stolen goods towards a good cause, like Robin Hood.

> Would you count this as malware if it was about the author trying to profit or steal from inattentive people using AI?

That’s a slippery slope and not at all related to the subject of the article

Re: Protestware for coding agents

#44

Post by helloplanets »

kioleanu wrote: post #43
helloplanets wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about me in any way. If something in your software is intentionally malicious or damaging, it's malware. Doesn't really matter what the reasoning for including the malicious part is. Would you count this as malware if it was about the author trying to profit or steal from inattentive people using AI? You know, he could be putting those stolen goods towards a good cause, like Robin Hood.

> Would you count this as malware if it was about the author trying to profit or steal from inattentive people using AI? That’s a slippery slope and not at all related to the subject of the article

I thought we already were sliding down the slippery slope here.

Re: Protestware for coding agents

#46

Post by CachedaCodes »

Reminds me of the incident with the colors.js npm package, where the maintainer sabotaged his own packages in protest against big corporations using but not supporting open source.

I get the reasoning behind it but I can't condone it. Regardless, in the end it's the developers' responsibility what tools they use and how they use them.

Re: Protestware for coding agents

#47

Post by rzmmm »

fwlr wrote: post #42

I disapprove of this action by the jqwik owner, but I also disapprove of commentary classifying it as “malware”, “malicious code”, or similar. By running an agent, you are turning plain text into an executable. This has great benefits for you, but (as with all great power) it comes with some added risks too. Please remain wary of externalizing these risks onto plain text authors by creating an expectation that all pl…

Red-teaming for the greater good.

Re: Protestware for coding agents

#48

Post by yaris »

helloplanets wrote: post #40
kioleanu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it malware tho? Do you not check the output your agents produce?

This isn't about me in any way. If something in your software is intentionally malicious or damaging, it's malware. Doesn't really matter what the reasoning for including the malicious part is. Would you count this as malware if it was about the author trying to profit or steal from inattentive people using AI? You know, he could be putting those stolen goods towards a good cause, like Robin Hood.

In the RN for the latest release it states: Breaking Changes Use of jqwik >= 1.10 with coding agents is strongly discouraged. Jqwik’s output to stdout may confuse AI-based agents.

So to me it is malware as much as the "rm" command is malware - if used without understanding and reading docs it can wipe all your data.

Re: Protestware for coding agents

#49

Post by rzmmm »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #36

I am curious if agents like Claude Code would actually fall for that. Has anyone tested it? Also presumably if using Git even if it did, it wouldn't be such a huge deal?

Most likely not. There are some ad hoc countermeasures by Anthropic but the real solution is sandboxing
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