Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

gitlab.redox-os.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 504 posts

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

#401

Post by coderenegade »

ipaddr wrote: post #341
ndriscoll wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like a company on the verge of creating a mess that will require a rewrite in a year or so. Maybe an llm can do it.

I suspect this is more true than most people think. Today's bad code will be cleaned up by tomorrow's agents.

The other factor that gets glossed over is that llms create a financial incentive to create cleaner code, with tests, because the agent that you pay for will be more efficient when the code is easier to understand, and has clear patterns for extensibility. When I do code with llms, a big part of it is demonstration, i.e. pseudocoding a pattern/structure, asking the model if it understands, and then having it complete the pattern. I've had a lot of success with this approach.

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

#402

Post by coderenegade »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #293
geoffmunn wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"make their own fork which nobody else is interested in because it is personalized to them" Isn't that literally how open-source works, and why there's so many Linux distros? Code quality is a subjective term as well, I feel like everyone dunking on AI coding is a defensive reaction - over time this will become an entirely acceptable concept.

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…

I think that in the long run, AI assisted coding will turn out to be better than handcrafted code. When you pay for every token, and code generation is quick, a clean, low entropy codebase with good test coverage gets you a lot more for your dollar than a dog's breakfast. It's also much easier to fix bad decisions made early on in a project's life, because the machine is doing all of the heavy lifting.

This also lines up with the history of automation in many other industries. Modern manufacturing is capable of producing parts that a medieval blacksmith couldn't dream of, for example. Sure, maybe an artisan can produce better code than an llm now, but AI assisted humans will beat them in the near future if they aren't already producing similar quality output at greater speed, and tomorrow's models will fix the bad code written today. The fact that there's even a discussion on automated vs hand written today means that the writing is almost certainly on the wall.

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

#403

Post by est31 »

notpachet wrote: post #279
GorbachevyChase wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you’re being serious. Claude and GPT regularly write programs that are way better than what I would’ve written. Maybe you haven’t used a decent harness or a model released in the last year? It’s usually verbose, whereas I would try the simplest thing that could possibly work. However, it can knock out but would have taken me multiple weekends in a few minutes. The value proposition isn’t even close. It’…

> Claude and GPT regularly write programs that are way better than what I would’ve written Is that really true? Like, if you took the time to plan it carefully, dot every i, cross every t? The way I think of LLM's is as "median targeters" -- they reliably produce output at the centre of the bell curve from their training set. So if you're working in a language that you're unfamiliar with -- let's say I wanted to make…

Have you tried the latest models at best settings?

I've been writing software for 20 years. Rust since 10 years. I don't consider myself to be a median coder, but quite above average.

Since the last 2 years or so, I've been trying out changes with AI models every couple months or so, and they have been consistently disappointing. Sure, upon edits and many prompts I could get something useful out of it but often I would have spent the same amount of time or more than I would have spent manually coding.

So yes, while I love technology, I'd been an LLM skeptic for a long time, and for good reason, the models just hadn't been good. While many of my colleagues used AI, I didn't see the appeal of it. It would take more time and I would still have to think just as much, while it be making so many mistakes everywhere and I would have to constantly ask it to correct things.

Now 5 months or so ago, this changed as the models actually figured it out. The February releases of the models sealed things for me.

The models are still making mistakes, but their number and severity is lower, and the output would fit the specific coding patterns in that file or area. It wouldn't import a random library but use the one that was already imported. If I asked it to not do something, it would follow (earlier iterations just ignored me, it was frustrating).

At least for the software development areas I'm touching (writing databases in Rust), LLMs turned into a genuinely useful tool where I now am able to use the fundamental advantages that the technology offers, i.e. write 500 lines of code in 10 minutes, reducing something that would have taken me two to three days before to half a day (as of course I still need to review it and fix mistakes/wrong choices the tool made).

Of course this doesn't mean that I am now 6x faster at all coding tasks, because sometimes I need to figure out the best design or such, but

I am talking about Opus 4.6 and Codex 5.3 here, at high+ effort settings, and not about the tab auto completion or the quick edit features of the IDEs, but the agentic feature where the IDE can actually spend some effort into thinking what I, the user, meant with my less specific prompt.

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

#404

Post by Copyrightest »

flammafex wrote: post #398
Copyrightest wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NetBSD has a very reasonable stance: If you commit code that was not written by yourself, double check that the license on that code permits import into the NetBSD source repository, and permits free distribution. Check with the author(s) of the code, make sure that they were the sole author of the code and verify with them that they did not copy any other code. Code generated by a large language model or similar tec…

No, it is not reasonable to presume code generated by any large language model is "tainted code." What does that even mean? It sounds like a Weird Al parody of the song "Tainted Love."

[dead]

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

#405

Post by eschaton »

flammafex wrote: post #398
Copyrightest wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NetBSD has a very reasonable stance: If you commit code that was not written by yourself, double check that the license on that code permits import into the NetBSD source repository, and permits free distribution. Check with the author(s) of the code, make sure that they were the sole author of the code and verify with them that they did not copy any other code. Code generated by a large language model or similar tec…

No, it is not reasonable to presume code generated by any large language model is "tainted code." What does that even mean? It sounds like a Weird Al parody of the song "Tainted Love."

“Taint” has been a term of art in Open Source for decades. That you don’t know this reveals your ignorance, not any sort of cleverness.

LLMs regurgitate their training data. If they’re generating code, they’re not modeling the syntax of a language to solve a problem, they’re reproducing code they ingested, code that is covered by copyright. Just regurgitating that code via an LLM rather than directly from your editor’s clipboard does not somehow remove that copyright.

It’s clear you think you should be allowed to use LLMs to do whatever you want. Fortunately there are smarter people than you out there who recognize that there are situations where their use is not advised.

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

#406

Post by ndriscoll »

coderenegade wrote: post #401
ipaddr wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a company on the verge of creating a mess that will require a rewrite in a year or so. Maybe an llm can do it.

I suspect this is more true than most people think. Today's bad code will be cleaned up by tomorrow's agents. The other factor that gets glossed over is that llms create a financial incentive to create cleaner code, with tests, because the agent that you pay for will be more efficient when the code is easier to understand, and has clear patterns for extensibility. When I do code with llms, a big part of it is demonst…

> llms create a financial incentive to create cleaner code, with tests, because the agent that you pay for will be more efficient when the code is easier to understand, and has clear patterns for extensibility

Right, this is the kind of discussion we're having on my team: suddenly all of the already good engineering practices like good observability, clear tests with high coverage, clean design, etc. act as a massive force multiplier and are that much more important. They're also easier to do if you prioritize it. We should be seeing quality go up. It's trivial to explore the solution space with throwaway PoCs, collect real data to drive your design, do all of those "nice to have" cleanups, etc. The people who assume LLM = slop are participating in a bizarre form of cope. Garbage in, garbage out; quality in, quality out. Just accept that coding per se is not going to be a profession for long. Leverage new tools to learn more, do more, etc. This should be an exciting time for programmers.

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

#407

Post by eschaton »

hparadiz wrote: post #256
rswail wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to read the report from the US Copyright office that specifically says that it's *not* (c) copyright of the operator. It doesn't matter if the "change this variable name" instruction ends up with the same result as a human operator using a text editor. There is a big difference between "change this variable name" and "refactor this code base to extract a singleton".

You may as well be the MPAA right now throwing threats around sharing MP3s. We're past the point of caring and the laws will catch up with reality eventually. The US copyright office says things that get turned over in court all the time.

Tell me, how have laws “caught up with” “the [RIAA…] throwing threats around sharing MP3s?” So far as I know that’s still considered copyright infringement and the person doing it, if caught, can be liable for very substantial statutory damages.

It sounds like you really can’t handle being told “no, you can’t use an LLM for this” by someone else, even if they have every right to do so. You should probably talk to your therapist about that.

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

#408

Post by eschaton »

pmarreck wrote: post #109
hparadiz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when the PR is clear, reasonable, short, checked by a human, and clearly fixes, implements, or otherwise improves the code base and has no alternative implementation that is reasonably different from the initially presented version?

This is where most reasonable people would say “OK, fine” CLEARLY, a lot of developers are not reasonable

It is entirely reasonable for a project to require you to attest that the thing you are contributing is your own work.

The unreasonable ones are the ones with the oppositional-defiant “You can’t tell me I can’t use an LLM!” reaction.

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

#409

Post by eschaton »

hrmtst93837 wrote: post #352
BlackFly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is enforceable, I think you mean to say that it cannot be prevented since people can attempt to hide their usage? Most rules and laws are like that, you proscribe some behavior but that doesn't prevent people from doing it. Therefore you typically need to also define punishments: > This policy is not open to discussion, any content submitted that is clearly labelled as LLM-generated (including issues, merge reques…

[flagged]

[flagged]

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

#410

Post by eschaton »

khalic wrote: post #231
BlackFly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is enforceable, I think you mean to say that it cannot be prevented since people can attempt to hide their usage? Most rules and laws are like that, you proscribe some behavior but that doesn't prevent people from doing it. Therefore you typically need to also define punishments: > This policy is not open to discussion, any content submitted that is clearly labelled as LLM-generated (including issues, merge reques…

Unenforceable means they can't actually enforce it since they can't discriminate high quality LLM code from hand typed

[flagged]
Post reply on HN