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Changing how we develop Ladybird

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Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#521

Post by fc417fc802 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #262
fc417fc802 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trusting the legislative branch of my government is different from "so you think it'll work out well for everyone then huh?", btw. Agreed, and that was exactly my point. Concern about possible impacts of a technology were expressed and you responded that you trust your government. But that's not the same as thinking that everything is headed in a good direction and doesn't require intervention. > Why does it matter…

I feel like you're trying to move this conversation in a direction of discussing policy, while the context are individuals, their emotions and how they feel about things, that's how the conversation started. I never talked about how much I trust/distrust my government, all I said was that I trust the legislative branch, as parent commentator said they didn't trust their legislative branch. How much I distrust/trust m…

I don't think it's an attempt to shift the focus of the conversion when the points I raised are directly relevant to the matter at hand. The Luddites were brought up and your response is that you have faith in your elected representatives. My point is that there's a lot more to the picture than just whether or not one's own country makes a reasonable attempt at navigating the situation. The expected longer term social and economic consequences are what directly determine how people feel about the technology.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#522

Post by Planktonne »

elestor wrote: post #511
TalkingCodeMonk wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the solution is for FOSS developers to pay large sums of money to AI companies, to solve the problem that the AI companies created, for profit? ... and you typed this out as though extorting charities were a solution, instead of a grotesquely immoral and unethical systemic failure?

I'm on your side, but don't you think 'grotesquely immoral and unethical' is a bit of an exhaggeration? It's just software.

Software has an ethical dimension, and it's ignorant or disingenuous to dismiss that.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#523

Post by Barrin92 »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #350
gbalduzzi wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't see solutions on how a normal person can become a mantainer though. If all relevant open source projects close up their contributions, you can't enter the project anymore from an external point of view. Almost all open-source public figures started by being interested in a project and submitting PR to it, until eventually either joining the project as core mantainer or creating a separate open source pr…

> how a normal person can become a maintainer though. Is the goal to produce high-quality software, or is the goal to produce an apprenticeship scheme for developers who are interested in the project but not so interested that they are willing to write an email to introduce themself or otherwise engage in normal human social interactions? Normal people will still be able to get involved if they want to, just like nor…

>Normal people will still be able to get involved if they want to,

there isn't much evidence that this is happening. When you eyeball the average age of maintainers on mailing lists these days for prominent open source projects like the linux kernel, it's been steadily creeping up, to somewhere in the 50s now I'd guess. There's a complete dearth of people in their 20s or even 30s in particular in positions of responsibility, there's no next generations of leaders.

That's fatal in the long run. You need to have an apprenticeship system or something like a vocational pipeline to engage people in a structured way so that you can produce talent and also be objective and systematic. Something like a guild system you have in the DACH region where companies survive centuries, and that's not because random people write mails, it's because there's a industry wide support system and training process.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#525

Post by eschaton »

dormento wrote: post #503
radlad wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can empathize with this view but I've also seen one line clear bug fixes rejected because CC signed off on it. There's no other correct fix - why do you care which pen I used to write it?

I don't really know if this would be the best solution, but we could maybe define a sliding LoC limit per PR? Also a limit on the number of open PRs per contributor. This way those small, reviewable contributions would get a fair shot at being landed instead of being blanket banned, and the maintainer overhead would be more reasonable.

Even that small one-line contribution is not the contributor’s own work. Since the contributor does not hold the copyright to it, they do not have the right to contribute it to the project.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#526

Post by appreciatorBus »

Barrin92 wrote: post #523
appreciatorBus wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how a normal person can become a maintainer though. Is the goal to produce high-quality software, or is the goal to produce an apprenticeship scheme for developers who are interested in the project but not so interested that they are willing to write an email to introduce themself or otherwise engage in normal human social interactions? Normal people will still be able to get involved if they want to, just like nor…

>Normal people will still be able to get involved if they want to, there isn't much evidence that this is happening. When you eyeball the average age of maintainers on mailing lists these days for prominent open source projects like the linux kernel, it's been steadily creeping up, to somewhere in the 50s now I'd guess. There's a complete dearth of people in their 20s or even 30s in particular in positions of respons…

Yes but that predates AI & projects rejecting pull requests, so I would argue this is a separate unrelated phenomenon. If anything, the fact that despite accepting PRs, most projects have little new blood, means that PRs were rarely a significant pathway for future maintainers.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#527

Post by aembleton »

Sharlin wrote: post #471
Sharlin wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m never getting accustomed to the fact that there’s now an entire generation of coders who have never seen a world where "everything" is open-source and developed in the bazaar style (are people these days even aware of the metaphor or Raymond’s book?), a world in which the frigging Microsoft is a major OSS vendor and in charge of facilitating most of the open-source programming on the planet. Try explaining that t…

> there’s now an entire generation of coders who have never seen a world where "everything" is open-source and developed in the bazaar style (Sorry, accidentally negated my meaning there, what I meant is that they have only seen this current world. Or never seen a world where it isn't the case, to use a confusing double negation.)

> "everything" is open-source and developed in the bazaar style

A lot of stuff isn't. It may be open source, but the number of contributors is small and many large projects are cathedrals with people volunteering to lay some stones. The large projects often have core teams who organise and manage it, but then accept some contributions. It's closer to the organised Cathedral, than the chaotic Bazaar.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#528

Post by darthwalsh »

rzmmm wrote: post #49
AdamN wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem with that nowadays might be that AI can do all the incantations that formerly acted as gates to contributors.

Maybe not. Sqlite has some kind of hand-written license-agreement waiver procedure.

AU is just as effective as humans at contributing to sqlite: they don't accept contributions.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#529

Post by eschaton »

elestor wrote: post #511
TalkingCodeMonk wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the solution is for FOSS developers to pay large sums of money to AI companies, to solve the problem that the AI companies created, for profit? ... and you typed this out as though extorting charities were a solution, instead of a grotesquely immoral and unethical systemic failure?

I'm on your side, but don't you think 'grotesquely immoral and unethical' is a bit of an exhaggeration? It's just software.

No, these things don’t exist in a vacuum. Most LLMs were trained on huge amounts of copyrighted works that they then regurgitate portions of without regard to license or copyright holder, and without attribution.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#530

Post by [deleted] »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #345
Yokohiii wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source development has become more and more superficial aligning with modern social network characteristics. It's more important to have an contribution, a active commit history, a few stars as a proof of pixel fame than the intrinsic value of the contributions or projects. Before the rise of github, open source projects were heavily walled gardens. Little clubs that gave you a stare when you entered the room. G…

Yes. Open source existed and thrived before GitHub, before git, and before anyone had ever used the words “pull request“. It was different, to be sure, but it was not worse. We are living through a transition, but people do that all the time and we adjust our behaviour and we find new equilibriums. We will do that with open source too, and if it ends up looking more like open source in the 80s or 90s, it’s gonna be f…

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