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Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

423 points · 507 comments · lladnar

  1. minimaxir · · focus · HN ↗
    I'm particularly annoyed with the complaint in the linked thread about the agentic-developed chess engine.

    > Moreover, you are giving absolutely nothing back to the community, which is central to open-source engine dev. You are only taking.

    What would that user prefer? That the developer push a PR upstream...that presumably would be shot down and the user subject to further harrassment because it would be LLM derived at minimum? It seems like a catch-22 where the only winning move is not to play.

    That thread also highlights the overlap between "people who are against LLM usage for coding" and "people who are very particular about AGPL."

    1. zapataband1 · · focus · HN ↗

      [dead]

      1. minimaxir · · focus · HN ↗
        This repo is all "stolen code regurgitated by an LLM" so that is an impossible task and therefore makes the request performative.
        1. anematode · · focus · HN ↗
          My implicit request, which I should have made clearer, was for him to delete (or make private) the repository and move on to greater ideals.
          1. KingMob · · focus · HN ↗
            Why not request that the public chess boards/lists/ranking sites disqualify coda, or break it out into an AI-allowed/only category?

            That's both more honest, and probably more fruitful.

            1. boomlinde · · focus · HN ↗
              > That's both more honest

              In what way is it more honest?

    2. boomlinde · · focus · HN ↗
      > the only winning move is not to play

      Presumably no one is forcing the maintainer at gunpoint to have an LLM slightly shake up other people's code, relicense it under an incompatible license and then claim that "every single line of code is written by Claude Code", so I don't see the issue with not playing if that's the only option.

      If you can't make contributions that anyone finds interesting enough to include upstream and have no plans to publish your AGPL derived code under a compatible license, you can keep your changes to yourself. Nothing lost, nothing gained, license honored.

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