I really don't get those takes. AI is the best thing that ever happened to the Free Software world, it is basically turning any software into Free Software. You can just throw file formats, protocols or even plain binaries at the AI and it'll reverse engineer everything in a pinch. Users can finally modify software themselves, which was always the goal of the Free Software world, but very rarely happened in actuality, since it was just so damn complicated. AI lowered the barrier of entry tremendously, not just in terms of required knowledge, but especially time. Same with Creative Commons, sharing art and stuff, was a nice gesture, but rarely useful, since the level of work to modify a work to fit your project was pretty close to just doing it from scratch anyway. With AI everybody can toy around with image generators and get what they want.
Is a social contract being broken? Yeah, kind of, but the problems that that contract existed to solve are no longer a thing. Creation is now easy and commodified. We finally have computer we can interact with in natural language, something people tried to do for at least 70 years and never made any significant progress on until LLM arrived.
If you want to gatekeep or only create stuff to boost your own ego or portfolio, then AI might be an issue, if you actually want to build stuff, AI is godsend. We are essentially living in the StarTrek future with Holodecks and replicators and people still find reason to complain.
> If you want to gatekeep or only create stuff to boost your own ego or portfolio, then AI might be an issue, if you actually want to build stuff, AI is godsend.
Exactly this. I've been very confused by the free software advocates that seemed to hate AI until I realized their reasons for releasing software under an open source license were very different than what I assumed they were.
Neither of your guesses is reality based. Open source contributors get no credit in general. To the point that even commenters on HN dont seem to know who they, in general are.
That being said there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a portfolio. It is 100% valid motivation. The only issue with that theory is that no one cares about your open source contributions. Not employers, not peers, no one.
What I do find fascinating tho is that fans of the most selfish egoistical companies and tech groups ... insinuate artists, open source programmers, writers or anyone else is selfish or otherwise disapponting if any part of their work involve actual human motivation.
I wouldn't say that wanting to contribute to a shared commons of cool stuff isn't a human motivation.
And I'm not deriding those that build open source to boost their own reputation. I'm just much less interested in their work than the work of folks that are motivated by improving the commons (even if they get no credit).
You are imagining people in your head. Most serious open source contributions are paid for. Per FSF survey overwhelmingly so.
Because, they are a lot of work. They are not hobbies or kitchen soup two hours a week effort. These require a lot of sustained effort and time, that would either takes time from your paid job, or would make you effectively work 60 hours a week which means you have no other life.
Why do we need more? Why is that not a big enough reason.
If a modern-day Beethoven were told that his work will be slurped in by a machine and he will remain unknown to the world, would it be acceptable to him? To you?
Context: I was accused of raising a strawman argument. I was explaining that I don't think it's a strawman, and your comment suggests you agree.
It's a perfectly good reason, but I lament the loss of people who are doing open source just to get credit much less than I would lament the loss of people doing open source because they wanted to contribute to a shared commons.
Fame only has utility so long as it gets you paid. If you can get paid without being famous, that's probably a win.
I'm not very concerned about unrecognized genius: they are all around us, and the usual rule is that we've never heard of them. I think the that's just fine.
Completely agree that low-value pull requests and bug reports are a problem, but that's not a problem with AI. That's a problem with people using GitHub and trying to do collaborative development in an ungated environment. Free software and open source are orthogonal to collaborative development, as we see with projects like SQLite, or AOSP, or Java, each of which impose their own gates for contribution, separate from the ability to generate code.
I said people wanted credit more often than I had expected. You said "Way to straw man all counter arguments before they even got any."
The current point you're making is (I think) that OSS devs don't want credit, they want to be free of spam. I, for example, host my free software on fossil and don't accept contributions at all. It's not that I don't want them, it's that I don't want the noise, so I feel like that's a valid way to distribute open source.
But when I raise that, you're saying I'm moving the goalpost. I think the goalpost is in the same exact location as it has been for the entire discussion: open source authors that don't care about getting credit and want to distribute their free software can do so without any worry about AI.
If your underlying point is that AI has lowered the barrier to entry for code submissions, making previously-viable approaches to collaborative development infeasible, that's completely fair, I just wasn't treating that as fundamental to open source development in the same way you were.
grumbel · · focus · HN ↗
Is a social contract being broken? Yeah, kind of, but the problems that that contract existed to solve are no longer a thing. Creation is now easy and commodified. We finally have computer we can interact with in natural language, something people tried to do for at least 70 years and never made any significant progress on until LLM arrived.
If you want to gatekeep or only create stuff to boost your own ego or portfolio, then AI might be an issue, if you actually want to build stuff, AI is godsend. We are essentially living in the StarTrek future with Holodecks and replicators and people still find reason to complain.
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
Exactly this. I've been very confused by the free software advocates that seemed to hate AI until I realized their reasons for releasing software under an open source license were very different than what I assumed they were.
matsemann · · focus · HN ↗
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
That being said there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a portfolio. It is 100% valid motivation. The only issue with that theory is that no one cares about your open source contributions. Not employers, not peers, no one.
What I do find fascinating tho is that fans of the most selfish egoistical companies and tech groups ... insinuate artists, open source programmers, writers or anyone else is selfish or otherwise disapponting if any part of their work involve actual human motivation.
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
And I'm not deriding those that build open source to boost their own reputation. I'm just much less interested in their work than the work of folks that are motivated by improving the commons (even if they get no credit).
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
Because, they are a lot of work. They are not hobbies or kitchen soup two hours a week effort. These require a lot of sustained effort and time, that would either takes time from your paid job, or would make you effectively work 60 hours a week which means you have no other life.
End result is that these are paid positions, so.
sriram_malhar · · focus · HN ↗
If a modern-day Beethoven were told that his work will be slurped in by a machine and he will remain unknown to the world, would it be acceptable to him? To you?
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
It's a perfectly good reason, but I lament the loss of people who are doing open source just to get credit much less than I would lament the loss of people doing open source because they wanted to contribute to a shared commons.
Fame only has utility so long as it gets you paid. If you can get paid without being famous, that's probably a win.
I'm not very concerned about unrecognized genius: they are all around us, and the usual rule is that we've never heard of them. I think the that's just fine.
sriram_malhar · · focus · HN ↗
Fame can have many good reasons. Just feeling the warm glow of adulation is plenty enough for some.
matsemann · · focus · HN ↗
What they do want, however, is to not have to spend time on the thousands of AI generated pull requests and bug reports.
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
matsemann · · focus · HN ↗
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
The current point you're making is (I think) that OSS devs don't want credit, they want to be free of spam. I, for example, host my free software on fossil and don't accept contributions at all. It's not that I don't want them, it's that I don't want the noise, so I feel like that's a valid way to distribute open source.
But when I raise that, you're saying I'm moving the goalpost. I think the goalpost is in the same exact location as it has been for the entire discussion: open source authors that don't care about getting credit and want to distribute their free software can do so without any worry about AI.
If your underlying point is that AI has lowered the barrier to entry for code submissions, making previously-viable approaches to collaborative development infeasible, that's completely fair, I just wasn't treating that as fundamental to open source development in the same way you were.