Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it toLLMs: (enable that)Free software people: Oh no not like that
-
Enablement isn't my issue with use of llm's. It's the glossing over of it's downsides
the techbros pushing it & the bullshit claims made for what it can do
the price paid by the ppl who provided the data sets
the environmental impact of the data centres
the users the techbros sell it to
the anti freedom uses it gets put to
the fact the shit code it produces from poor programmers - wanna fly in a vibe coded plane?
the loss of skills when you rely on llm's 100% of the time@dekkzz78 There's truth in what you're saying and also a lot of it is the same shape as arguing against mass produced clothing over hand tailored clothing
-
@mjg59 Ok, but the process of writing code is creative. You think as you write, new ideas are formed. The LLM process at least reduces that.
@barnoid Huh interesting, that's really not my experience of writing code - I sit down with a formed idea of what needs to happen and then I smash keys until it's there. And now I'm curious whether there's a real disconnect between with different models of coding.
-
@mjg59 What you propose is actually illegal, even if the law doesn’t make much sense. I wonder if you ever had the cops sent after you on a corp-run IP case… maybe it would make you feel different?
@promovicz Information wants to be free
-
@mjg59 That being said, I do think that the "Free Software" concern is legitimate, especially when people are replicating existing GPL programs to circumvent copyleft and undermining a sense of community. After all, copyleft means that you are publishing the source of a program, thereby respecting the user, under the condition that they return the same respect and treat everyone else under the same terms.
@pkal In a universe where someone could legally say "I want software that does this, but slightly differently" and get it then copyleft would be meaningless - the free software goals would already be achieved
-
@mjg59 this feels like a weird reduction of the argument as LLMs as used by people do more than generate code at a micro-level (statements et al, regardless of your thinking those can't be creative), they are also used to architect codebases entirely
regardless, disappointing to read your apparent need to defend slop
@shiz Plenty of ways you can use this to generate terrible outcomes, and also plenty of ways people can hack shit into copyleft code that results in terrible outcomes, we can't copyright license our way to taste
-
@chris_evelyn @mjg59 Isn't https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2025/09/press-release-apertus-a-fully-open-transparent-multilingual-language-model.html supposed to be something like that?
-
@mjg59 I disagree. Code is written for people, not computers. It doesn’t matter where the creativity exists, if companies/people reap it without giving a damn.
“Let it go!” == “Don’t fight it!”
@promovicz Man in an ideal world sure, but in the world we live in people frequently write code for themselves and not others. How many projects have weird macros or unhelpful comments or quirky norms? To the extent that code is creative it frequently hinders understnding and reuse, not aids it.
-
@mjg59 Fuck off with that shit. This doesn't even smell like a good faith argument.
@barubary given my history, if your immediate conclusion is that I'm not presenting an honest opinion then I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of who I am
-
@mjg59 I agree not all code is art, and often not even craft. But contrary to optimizing compilers, we're not yet at a point where the generated code only needs to be read/modified by a handful of optimization experts, as it is with ASM. The generated code isn't even reliably identical between 2 prompts.
The AIGen'd code I've seen can be quite elegant taken in isolation, but looks a lot like a Frankenstein'd behemoth when I look at "large" (beyond toy project) code bases.
@jenesuispasgoth I mean kind of the point of free software is that people get to modify it to their own ends and that doesn't mean it has to be good - when I first started hacking things to meet my needs I was definitely writing stuff that couldn't be upstreamed, but it worked for me, and making it easier for others to do that is a win
-
Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!
Clearly my most unpopular thread ever, so let me add a clarification: submitting LLM generated code you don't understand to an upstream project is absolute bullshit and you should never do that. Having an LLM turn an existing codebase into something that meets your local needs? Do it. The code may be awful, it may break stuff you don't care about, and that's what all my early patches to free software looked like. It's ok to solve your problem locally.
-
@tthbaltazar I agree with your distinction, and also both outcomes can involve me either writing by hand or engaging sufficiently clearly with an LLM to get that outcome.
But, well, we all know software engineering isn't what we all engage in. Sometimes we just want to fix a thing and we don't want to write tests and we don't want it to be perfect and there's value in that!
@mjg59 @tthbaltazar might i suggest you not compare that to software engineering then?
-
@mjg59 @tthbaltazar might i suggest you not compare that to software engineering then?
@dysfun @tthbaltazar Where did I do that?
-
@chris_evelyn @mjg59 I haven't taken a proper look at it either, so I don't know if it is open-washing as has been the case with a lot of other models, but if this means anything RMS has stated that it appears to "be free".
-
@p If you're doing something other than
var++
then you're doing something wrong. Code is instructions to a machine. The description of what that code does may be creative, if the actual implementation is then you are almost certainly in a bad place.
-
@Nfoonf If you're willing to accept that then what's the problem? Are we threatening to burn down Ikea stores now?
@mjg59 the problem ist the expansive nature of low quality capitalism and the vulnerability of craftmanship to industrial mass production. One day you only can get the low class slop and the many ways in which it hurts people due to it‘s shortcomings will be normalized. And we lose craft and skill in the way that will not be replaced but has to be bought from the rent seeking owners of the factories of low class goods. Of course people of wealth will not see this as a problem.
-
@mjg59 the problem ist the expansive nature of low quality capitalism and the vulnerability of craftmanship to industrial mass production. One day you only can get the low class slop and the many ways in which it hurts people due to it‘s shortcomings will be normalized. And we lose craft and skill in the way that will not be replaced but has to be bought from the rent seeking owners of the factories of low class goods. Of course people of wealth will not see this as a problem.
@mjg59 you can probably buy yourself free from the misery of the shortcomings of low quality goods and services.
-
@mjg59 you can probably buy yourself free from the misery of the shortcomings of low quality goods and services.
@Nfoonf Back in the day I had software that didn't do what I wanted, and I didn't know C yet. I patched stuff in many awful ways that met my needs and which taught me nothing in the moment and could never be upstreamed. How would having a machine help me achieve that make free software worse?
-
@mjg59 you can probably buy yourself free from the misery of the shortcomings of low quality goods and services.
@mjg59 so LLM slop is probably once again a class problem and as it not only keeps people from getting better quality goods but also denies people knowing certain skills of earning their livelihood by offering these low quality solutions you can not possibly compete with.
-
@mjg59 so LLM slop is probably once again a class problem and as it not only keeps people from getting better quality goods but also denies people knowing certain skills of earning their livelihood by offering these low quality solutions you can not possibly compete with.
@Nfoonf The irony here is that now I have money I would rather pay people to solve these problems
-
@dekkzz78 There's truth in what you're saying and also a lot of it is the same shape as arguing against mass produced clothing over hand tailored clothing
true, but then its down to values & how you prioritise such things
wrt coding specifically companies are worried about skill loss & being dependant plus it ties the seniors into code review all the time
also I know 2 auto companies that have banned them due to creep into safety critical code
