I got into #FLOSS because it was a community-driven approach to making computers empower people.
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I got into #FLOSS because it was a community-driven approach to making computers empower people. Now, #opensource means "free training data for someone else's LLM."
I could ask, "What is the future of open source software," but I think that's the wrong question. I'd rather contemplate what community-driven, human-centering computing can look like in the era of scraping and slop.
@jrbe As far as we're concerned, the answer has and continues to be the same.
Actually build a fucking community. Document your values and stand for them. Don't sit back and wait for people to contribute - actively reach them out first, learn how they can help, and accommodate their onboarding. Make space for people with diverse skills. It is a community-oriented project - so do community and activism, not the code.
FOSS has long been dead in this regard, with every project just being 10 active nerds with 100 who ever submitted a PR while the usage is in tens of thousands being celebrated as some big success. No - each of those projects is a massive failure, even if the code solves some problems.
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I got into #FLOSS because it was a community-driven approach to making computers empower people. Now, #opensource means "free training data for someone else's LLM."
I could ask, "What is the future of open source software," but I think that's the wrong question. I'd rather contemplate what community-driven, human-centering computing can look like in the era of scraping and slop.
@jrbe the golden age of FOSS is definitely over. Many foundational, irreplaceable projects have been infected by AI generated contributions.
And completely regardless of the AI outputs quality, I doubt companies in the future will feel any incentive to contribute anything back; Some C-suite will always think they can wing it with AI.
So going forward, if we want a slop-free stack, we either have to stick to old versions or massively reduce scope. And that's not even touching hardware support
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I got into #FLOSS because it was a community-driven approach to making computers empower people. Now, #opensource means "free training data for someone else's LLM."
I could ask, "What is the future of open source software," but I think that's the wrong question. I'd rather contemplate what community-driven, human-centering computing can look like in the era of scraping and slop.
@jrbe Check this out https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/no-03-the-telekommunist-manifesto-dmytri-kleiner/ Non-capitalist FOSS should protect itself from corporations!
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@jrbe As far as we're concerned, the answer has and continues to be the same.
Actually build a fucking community. Document your values and stand for them. Don't sit back and wait for people to contribute - actively reach them out first, learn how they can help, and accommodate their onboarding. Make space for people with diverse skills. It is a community-oriented project - so do community and activism, not the code.
FOSS has long been dead in this regard, with every project just being 10 active nerds with 100 who ever submitted a PR while the usage is in tens of thousands being celebrated as some big success. No - each of those projects is a massive failure, even if the code solves some problems.
@KFears @jrbe the only reason the projects exist is to develop code that solved some nerd's problem. If community is the most important thing, there are social clubs of all kinds already.
Without an interest in the problem being solved, there's no reason to associate with the project. People with an interest in the problem will find their way to the project.
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@KFears @jrbe the only reason the projects exist is to develop code that solved some nerd's problem. If community is the most important thing, there are social clubs of all kinds already.
Without an interest in the problem being solved, there's no reason to associate with the project. People with an interest in the problem will find their way to the project.
@KFears @jrbe the nerds are interacting with dozens of projects to solve whatever problems they want to solve. They're not going to build social circles and hang out with all the participants in all of those projects. They're not going to have bbqs and beers and talk about their favorite movies with all of them. They're not there to be social.
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@KFears @jrbe the nerds are interacting with dozens of projects to solve whatever problems they want to solve. They're not going to build social circles and hang out with all the participants in all of those projects. They're not going to have bbqs and beers and talk about their favorite movies with all of them. They're not there to be social.
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I got into #FLOSS because it was a community-driven approach to making computers empower people. Now, #opensource means "free training data for someone else's LLM."
I could ask, "What is the future of open source software," but I think that's the wrong question. I'd rather contemplate what community-driven, human-centering computing can look like in the era of scraping and slop.
@jrbe I fully agree, but I'm very worried if human-sized computing will even still be possible, if big tech becomes a monopsony for hardware.
With the current RAM prices, for the first time in 25 years I'm actually worried about running out of spare parts for my self-hosted setup.
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I got into #FLOSS because it was a community-driven approach to making computers empower people. Now, #opensource means "free training data for someone else's LLM."
I could ask, "What is the future of open source software," but I think that's the wrong question. I'd rather contemplate what community-driven, human-centering computing can look like in the era of scraping and slop.
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@ramsey @jrbe Oooft. I'm gonna have to sit with that one for a bit. It does make me wonder. Open source _has_ always been a hack on broken and corrupted intellectual property laws... Reimagining it entirely starting with James' question feels proper.
. o O (It feels like we're entering a nexus of change as many systems we've relied on buckle under the weight of unsustainable things, including greed. I wonder what kind of world we'll usher in next. Anything feels possible, good or bad...)
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@ramsey @jrbe Oooft. I'm gonna have to sit with that one for a bit. It does make me wonder. Open source _has_ always been a hack on broken and corrupted intellectual property laws... Reimagining it entirely starting with James' question feels proper.
. o O (It feels like we're entering a nexus of change as many systems we've relied on buckle under the weight of unsustainable things, including greed. I wonder what kind of world we'll usher in next. Anything feels possible, good or bad...)
@robin @jrbe I waffle on this day-in and day-out. The other day, I was discussing SDKs with a colleague, and I said, “Why do we need SDKs anymore? Folks’ll just ask AI to build the integration for them.”
My colleague spent a few days reading the current blogosphere views about this and found that most seem to agree that SDKs are now more important than ever because, when asked to do something, LLMs will find a pattern and use it, and your SDK needs to be the pattern.
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@robin @jrbe I waffle on this day-in and day-out. The other day, I was discussing SDKs with a colleague, and I said, “Why do we need SDKs anymore? Folks’ll just ask AI to build the integration for them.”
My colleague spent a few days reading the current blogosphere views about this and found that most seem to agree that SDKs are now more important than ever because, when asked to do something, LLMs will find a pattern and use it, and your SDK needs to be the pattern.
@ramsey @jrbe That makes sense to me! My other half is giving a talk touching on that at North Bay Python this year — though he centers on frameworks, wherein there isn't going to be a big corpus because the idea is to craft just a few per language. SDKs strike me as similar in that way, perhaps even more rarefied.
Not the kind of thing an LLM lends itself to, even if it was ethically sound and grounded in humanity.
I'll be glad when we get to the real table flipping moment with all this!
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@ramsey @jrbe That makes sense to me! My other half is giving a talk touching on that at North Bay Python this year — though he centers on frameworks, wherein there isn't going to be a big corpus because the idea is to craft just a few per language. SDKs strike me as similar in that way, perhaps even more rarefied.
Not the kind of thing an LLM lends itself to, even if it was ethically sound and grounded in humanity.
I'll be glad when we get to the real table flipping moment with all this!
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I got into #FLOSS because it was a community-driven approach to making computers empower people. Now, #opensource means "free training data for someone else's LLM."
I could ask, "What is the future of open source software," but I think that's the wrong question. I'd rather contemplate what community-driven, human-centering computing can look like in the era of scraping and slop.
@jrbe One thing is sure: the establishment wants FOSS gone, but just because there's some talk about free software being dead doesn't mean that it is.
Proprietary software, with or without AI, will always end up enshittified, and so will projects that allow AI slop. There will always be a need for good-quality projects and I think demand is already growing for non-corporate options.
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