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

iTerm2 removes AI feature from core, creates separate plugin

gitlab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 148 posts

Re: iTerm2 removes AI feature from core, creates separate plugin

#81

Post by ComplexSystems »

_lvbh wrote: post #15

The comments are such a facepalm. > Increases the attack surface No it doesn’t. It fork/executes the plugin in a different process AND verifies the signature. If an attacker can replace the binary and do things with it, you already have a much larger problem. Even if they do, all it does is pass JSON around, it doesn’t allow you to execute anything from within iTerm (afaik) > It can be called by any process It’s not…

That guy in general was clearly just trolling. If you go further up, you can see that everyone's mostly happy with the solution to have a separate plugin for this but him. His first reason was that he just didn't want to see the other side win because it makes him "feel like a 2nd class community member." Then he switched his argument to that the new method would "have security concerns," again just to keep the whole thing going. It's terrible that the dev has to deal with this kind of thing.

Re: iTerm2 removes AI feature from core, creates separate plugin

#83

Post by janice1999 »

weinzierl wrote: post #66
jedberg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their concerns aren't really valid. It's an entirely optional feature. There is no functional difference between being in the core and being a plugin. Someone who wants to violate exfiltration policies can still do so with maybe one extra step.

On a technical level there is no relevant difference but on a social level there well is, in my opinion. The expectation is that plugins need to be activated explicitly and that do not get installed or activated automatically. Even stronger, a common impression about plugins is, that they are often a pain to install and get working. I know that this expectation has been violated occasionally in one form or another bu…

I completely agree. We often forget it's not always about the technical details of the implementation. Its about the attitude of developers and their relationship with their users and those users expectations. Users are 100% correct to be skeptical or even worried when they hear "AI integration". Putting it into the "core" makes a clear statement about the projects intentions. The developer recognizes this by saying the plugin change was to put people "at ease".

Re: iTerm2 removes AI feature from core, creates separate plugin

#84

Post by xemdetia »

_fat_santa wrote: post #26
alex_suzuki wrote: post #6

The comment for the change contains a note of bitterness: > I have two goals in this change: To allow developers in restrictive but technically incompetent organizations to continue to use iTerm2. That is, they disallow anything that could potentially exfiltrate data, but don't have their act together enough to implement MDM. So that people who hate AI can feel at ease that no AI will happen by accident without havin…

> To allow developers in restrictive but technically incompetent organizations to continue to use iTerm2 I mean sure it was a brash way of putting it but he's not wrong. I contract with an org that basically shuts off access to anything that is in any way related to AI, we can't even visit the OpenAI website on our computers. If this feature was part of core iTerm2 then 100% they would have banned the use of iTerm.

People really underestimate how much time is available to qualify whether a feature that on paper that sounds problematic is benign or functionally helpless without $XYZ other things by a security team. Saying use MDM to 'fix' it is dev time they might not have, and the only ethical thing they can do is remove the new unknown risks from their list of risks.

Much like your SLAs are not my SLAs your risks are not my risks. iterm2 inserting a mechanism to talk to a new class of component is not a minor change.

Re: iTerm2 removes AI feature from core, creates separate plugin

#86

Post by briandear »

moomoo11 wrote: post #69
Cu3PO42 wrote: post #22

I feel really sorry for the developer. I've only been a casual observer, but from my view point the community's reaction was... not great, to put it lightly. I get that a lot of us are tired of 'AI' being shoved down our throat at every possible turn. I get that a lot of us have privacy concerns. I get that maybe you don't want it in your terminal emulator. But iTerm is a free (both as in gratis and as in libre) open…

There was a highly upvoted article on here yesterday. Honestly I agree with their sentiments. iTerm should be a terminal app. Any of this stuff should be an extension/plugin, and not a core feature.

It should be whatever the maintainers want it to be. That’s the best part of open source. If someone isn’t happy, they can fork it and make their own.

Re: iTerm2 removes AI feature from core, creates separate plugin

#87

Post by baby_souffle »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #22

I feel really sorry for the developer. I've only been a casual observer, but from my view point the community's reaction was... not great, to put it lightly. I get that a lot of us are tired of 'AI' being shoved down our throat at every possible turn. I get that a lot of us have privacy concerns. I get that maybe you don't want it in your terminal emulator. But iTerm is a free (both as in gratis and as in libre) open…

> EDIT: gnachman, if you're reading this, thank you for your tireless work on iTerm. It serves me extremely well whenever I'm on macOS and holds a special place in my heart. I bought a MacBook in 2013 and it was the first *nix system that I daily drove as a desktop for a long time. I installed iTerm 2 in my first week and it was a constant companion for many years.

I'd like to second this. I had to move to a mac for a bunch of reasons that I wasn't super thrilled with and iTerm2 was one of the first things I installed. It made the transition much more bearable and the system just that much more comfortable overall.

I'm sorry that people didn't take kindly to this feature. For what it's worth, I find myself wishing that `Konsole` had a plugin on the side that would allow me to interact with chatGPT and the like. If I ever end up back on a mac full time, I'll (probably) be a happy user of this new function!

Re: iTerm2 removes AI feature from core, creates separate plugin

#89

Post by jaredklewis »

akira2501 wrote: post #38
Cu3PO42 wrote: post #22

I feel really sorry for the developer. I've only been a casual observer, but from my view point the community's reaction was... not great, to put it lightly. I get that a lot of us are tired of 'AI' being shoved down our throat at every possible turn. I get that a lot of us have privacy concerns. I get that maybe you don't want it in your terminal emulator. But iTerm is a free (both as in gratis and as in libre) open…

[flagged]

Because it’s the developer’s project and he can add whatever he feels like adding?

Re: iTerm2 removes AI feature from core, creates separate plugin

#90

Post by WhereIsTheTruth »

mmastrac wrote: post #3

The whole drama was pretty silly, and the fact that everyone got upset that a feature that is inactive by default, consumes no processing power, memory or anything else and bullied the author of the open-source program should make everyone unhappy. This is why open-source maintainers burn out and we can't have nice things. Honestly, people, please consider the human on the other side of the toxic discourse.

Nobody likes when a company (commercial-proprietary) sneaks in your tools, either directly or indirectly

Who knows if there was a deal made under the hood

Post reply on HN