> Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
Who wants to test it ? Preferably on real hardware. /s
Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
51–60 of 84 posts
Re: Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
#52> Lacking Copyright (or similarily a Public Domain declaration by a human), we don't receive sufficient rights grants which would permit us to include it into the aggregate body of source code, without that aggregate body becoming less free than it is now. Can someone explain this to me? I was under the impression that if a work of authorship was not copyrightable because it was AI generated and not authored by a hum…
Data theft of service or piracy from the web and "AI" users content are used in the model training sets, and when codified the statistical saliency is significant if popular content is present.
For example, when an LLM does a vector search, there is a high probability of pirated content bleed-though and isomorphic plagiarism in the high dimensional vector space results. Thus, often when you coincidentally type in "name a cartoon mouse", there is a higher probability Disney "Micky Mouse" will pop out in the output rather than "Mighty Mouse". Note Trademarks never expire if the fees are paid, and Disney can still technically sue anyone that messes with their mouse.
Much like em dashes "--", telling the current set of models to stop using them inappropriately often fails. Also, activation capping is used to improve the models behavioral vector, and have nothing to do with the Anthropic CEO developing political ethics.
LLM are useful for context search, but can't function properly without constantly stealing from actual humans. Thus, will often violate copyright, trademark, and patents. In a commercial context it is legally irrelevant how the output has misappropriated IP, and one can bet your wallet the lawyers won't care either. No, IP is not public domain for a long time (17 to 78 years) regardless of peoples delusions, even if some kid in a place like India (no software patents) thinks it is..
This channel offers several simplified explanations of the work being done with models, and Anthropic posts detailed research papers on its website.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDdKiQNw80c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx4Tpsk_fnM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAcwtV_bFp4
Many YC bots are poisoning discourse -- so this thread will likely get negative karma. Some LLM users seem to develop emotional or delusional relationships with the algorithms. The internet is already >52% generated nonsense and growing. =3
Re: Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
#53Binaries are copyrightable in both the US and the EU, and they are not technically produced by a human either, they're produced by a computer program. I honestly don't understand why this isn't extended to AI-generated code. Isn't it the same thing? One could argue that compilers merely transform source code into binaries "as is," while AI models have some "knowledge" baked in that they extract and paste as code. But…
That linked opinion overstates the case. In the real-world, two different programs performing any non-trivial but functionally identical task will look substantially dissimilar in their source code, and that dissimilarity will carry over to the compiled binary, meaning what was expressive (if anything) is largely preserved. To the extent two different programs do end up with identical code, then that aspect was likely primarily functional and non-copyrightable, or at least the expressive character didn't carry over to the binary. Ordering and naming of APIs in source code can be expressive, and that indeed is often lost (literally or at least the expressive character) during the compilation process, but there are other expressive aspects to software programing that will be preserved and protected in the binary form.
IMO, your intuition regarding AI is right--it's not a magic copyright laundering machine, and AFAIU courts have very quickly agreed that infringement is occurring. But in copyright law establishing infringement (or the possibility of infringement) is the easy, straight-forward part. Copyright infringement liability is a much more complex question. Transformative uses in particular are a Fair Use, and Fair Use is technically treated as an affirmative defense to infringement.[1] If something is Fair Use, infringement is effectively presumed. But Fair Uses are typically very fact-intensive questions, and unlike the case with search engines I'm not sure we'll get to the point where there's a well-defined fence protecting "AI".
[1] There's a scholarly pedantic debate about whether Fair Use is properly a "defense", rather than "exception" to infringement, but it walks and talks like a defense in the sense that the defendant has the burden of proving Fair Use after the plaintiff has established infringement. There's a similarly pedantic (though slightly more substantive) debate in criminal law regarding affirmative defenses. But the very term "affirmative defense" was coined to recognize and avoid these pedantic debates.
Re: Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
#54> So as of today, the Copyright system does not have a way for the output of a non-human produced set of files to contain the grant of permissions which the OpenBSD project needs to perform combination and redistribution. This seems extremely confused. The copyright system does not have a way to grant these permissions because the material is not covered under copyright! You can distribute it at will, not due to any…
This all relies, as the article points out, on everyone looking directly at code that both looks like and works like the only extant codebase for EXT4 and nonetheless concluding that in fact the computer conjured it from the aether. If I wrote a program that zipped up the Linux kernel source, unzipped it, and grepped -v for comments it would not then be magically transformed into unattributable public domain software…
Under the premise advanced in the quote, copyright is not being violated because there is none. Thus, the quote makes no sense as stated. It may be that, additionally, copyright is in fact being violated (I don't believe it myself), but if so that's a separate argument.
Re: Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is that different than a human writing the code? Whether an AI or a human wrote it, I would expect the same bar of validity/maintainability.
To me, SOTA is just bad at DRY, KISS, succint, well architected, top down, easy to test code and has to be constantly steered to come close. Even the article suggests that. YMMV.
TDD and strong goals help..
..much like with human development.
Re: Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
#56~20 years ago, the Linux camp accused OpenBSD of importing GPL'd code (a wireless driver IIRC) and cried foul. The code was removed. Fast forward to 2026, Theo says no to vibe-coded slop, prove to me your magic oracle LLM didn't ingest gobs of GPL code before spitting out an answer. People are big mad of course, but you want me to believe Theo is the bad guy here for playing it conservatively?
The history is a bit backwards but the point is good. OpenBSD atheros wireless code was imported into linux, the BSD attributions were removed, and it was re-declared as GPL. That was later changed back.
Re: Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
#57> Lacking Copyright (or similarily a Public Domain declaration by a human), we don't receive sufficient rights grants which would permit us to include it into the aggregate body of source code, without that aggregate body becoming less free than it is now. Can someone explain this to me? I was under the impression that if a work of authorship was not copyrightable because it was AI generated and not authored by a hum…
Data theft of service or piracy from the web and "AI" users content are used in the model training sets, and when codified the statistical saliency is significant if popular content is present. For example, when an LLM does a vector search, there is a high probability of pirated content bleed-though and isomorphic plagiarism in the high dimensional vector space results. Thus, often when you coincidentally type in "na…
This does not answer my question.
The quoted content said that "Lacking Copyright (or similarily a Public Domain declaration by a human), we don't receive sufficient rights grants which would permit us to include it into the aggregate body of source code, without that aggregate body becoming less free than it is now." I was explicitly asking how this meshed with my understanding of copyright, at least in the United States, which requires that a work of authorship be authored by a human and not by a machine; where a work is not authored by a human, copyright protection does not subsist, and therefore the respective work is in the public domain. And I was further asking for an explanation as to how including a work that is AI-generated (aka in the public domain) made "... that aggregate body becoming less free". Unless my understanding of copyright law and court precedent is massively off the mark, I am confused as to how less freedom is aforded in this instance.
Re: Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Data theft of service or piracy from the web and "AI" users content are used in the model training sets, and when codified the statistical saliency is significant if popular content is present. For example, when an LLM does a vector search, there is a high probability of pirated content bleed-though and isomorphic plagiarism in the high dimensional vector space results. Thus, often when you coincidentally type in "na…
This does not answer my question. The quoted content said that "Lacking Copyright (or similarily a Public Domain declaration by a human), we don't receive sufficient rights grants which would permit us to include it into the aggregate body of source code, without that aggregate body becoming less free than it is now." I was explicitly asking how this meshed with my understanding of copyright, at least in the United S…
The precedent case in the US formed a legal consensus that "AI" content can't be copyrighted, but it may also contain unlicensed/pirated IP/content.
Thus, one should not contaminate GPL/LGPL licensed source code with such content. The reason it causes problems is the legal submarines may (or may not if they settled out of court with Disney) surface at a later date, as the lawsuits and DMCA strikes hit publishers.
It doesn't mean people won't test this US legal precedent, as most won't necessarily personally suffer if a foundation gets sued out of existence for their best intentions/slop-push. =3
Re: Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
This all relies, as the article points out, on everyone looking directly at code that both looks like and works like the only extant codebase for EXT4 and nonetheless concluding that in fact the computer conjured it from the aether. If I wrote a program that zipped up the Linux kernel source, unzipped it, and grepped -v for comments it would not then be magically transformed into unattributable public domain software…
Under the premise advanced in the quote, copyright is not being violated because there is none. Thus, the quote makes no sense as stated. It may be that, additionally, copyright is in fact being violated (I don't believe it myself), but if so that's a separate argument.
The premise of the quote does not contain the assumption that there is no copyright to the code. In fact the various contributors do not advance an opinion about whether code written by an AI can be granted copyright. Rather they are saying that it is obviously derivative of code that is under copyright, that is only distributed under terms which, however many dry cleaners process it, will still conflict with the license under which they publish their software.
Re: Vibe-Coded Ext4 for OpenBSD
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, SOTA is just bad at DRY, KISS, succint, well architected, top down, easy to test code and has to be constantly steered to come close. Even the article suggests that. YMMV.
TDD and strong goals help.. ..much like with human development.
TDD makes the code test-passable, but it is still rng. As for goals, you can't foresee every stupid thing it will generate. It will look at a state machine, and rather than using the existing event structure, write its own loops and conditions. This is very different compared to human devs. No goal will help. You just keep yanking its chain until it generates as described. It can't even put imports at the top as you described. It can't help making circular refs in c++ despite being specifically told to use a hierarchical structure. Left alone you will get truly unstructured random mess.
People keep making trivial apps with open source examples thinking they found god. Another dismissive comment and I swear.