Thread

Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS

1021 points · 583 comments · fjfaase

ricardobeat · 1790328018 · focus · HN ↗
A note to the developers in the project, if anyone is reading: your repositories are in violation of the new Codeberg policy that forbids AI-generated code [1].
[1] <a href="https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html" rel="nofollow">https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-...
1. docheinestages · 1790329412 · focus · HN ↗
  Codeberg is trying to solve the right problem with the wrong solution. But hey, it's democratic!
  1. lucideer · 1790331398 · focus · HN ↗
    I like Codeberg's solution (hard written policy, light good-faith based enforcement), what would you suggest as a better solution?
    rhplus · 1790335270 · focus · HN ↗
    Their contention seems mainly focused on the heavy resource use of AI tooling.
    They run a service: they could impose limits on the number of submissions, builds, branches, scans, etc, and give additional usage credits to the large community projects they want to encourage.
    lucideer · 1790338646 · focus · HN ↗
    That & the legal aspects of hosting code of questionable copyright.
    The LLM revolution has proven that if you have enough institutional investors, the Berne Convention doesn't apply to you, but it's sofar unclear whether that exemption from international law extends to small EU-based non-profits.
    mitxela · 1790340152 · focus · HN ↗
    But they don't want to. They want to provide all needs for approved projects. They want that if a FOSS project legitimately releases 50 times a day, they want to make it work. If a slop project is wasting those resources that could be used for KDE, on nonsense, then they don't.
    They're not a free for all, they do KYCP (know your customer's projects) with an initial assumption of good faith.
    Also they're a voluntary society you can join by contributing money. They're not a charity as such, more like a group of people pooling resources, and also offering them to people outside the group on a good faith basis.
    Muromec · 1790341113 · focus · HN ↗
    Hard policy, light enforcement in practice means there is an actual shadow policy that you don't know, which is pretty bad to the point that it would be illegal if the government did it.
    lucideer · 1790344896 · focus · HN ↗
    Curious about your comment on two counts (genuinely, not being argumentative):
    1. how is this bad, in Codeberg's case, practically speaking?
    2. in what cases is this illegal for governments to do? In practice no legislation is perfectly enforced, & even judiciaries have varying degrees of exactness across countries - to the point that things such as desuetude are densely studied legal topics.
    (note: I'm aware of the negative ramifications if desuetude but not aware of any negative ramifications of Codeberg's specific ai policy)
    Muromec · 1790346696 · focus · HN ↗
    >in what cases is this illegal for governments to do?
    It's legal certainty principle and equality before the law principle and also prohibition of discrimination principle.
    For the law to be lawful (weird, but it's a thing, right) it should satisfy certain criteria. Me, being subject to the law should be able to predict whether my actions are allowed or not when I plan to do or not do them. If I can't predict the outcome of my actions, the law isn't valid. One of the outcomes of it is being able to read the law -- it's published and it's comprehensible, it has advance notice, etc.
    If the rule says "don't host LLM generated code", but everybody hosts LLM generated code and then I say mean things about one of the people providing the hosting and suddenly I'm deplatformed for hosting LLM generated code, then I'm not deplatformed for LLM generated code, I'm deplatformed for saying mean things about people with fragile ego. Or being part of a specific group. You are often explicitly prohibited to make certain decisions based on belonging to a certain group (religious, ethnic, sexual, trade union, health, criminal record based), but it could happen that somehow the outcome of the shadow policy correlates with those. Since we don't know the shadow policy and the stated policy doesn't seem to be applied equally, this is not great.
    See example about weed in a different comment.
    >how is this bad, in Codeberg's case, practically speaking?
    They look silly for stating it and not following (loss of credibility), then once they suddenly start following it, there will be different interpretations, including "I'm banned because I'm $protected_thing_that_you_should_not_be_banned_for", which is bad press.
    lucideer · 1790347758 · focus · HN ↗
    > suddenly I'm deplatformed for hosting LLM generated code, then I'm not deplatformed for LLM generated code, I'm deplatformed for saying mean things about people with fragile ego
    This is ultimately a matter of framing though. You can equally argue that (a) that person shouldn't be deplatformed because others' LLM use is tolerated or (b) all of them should be deplatformed including that person. In the latter case (b) the person who said mean things still experiences the same outcome, but by your logic this is just. Ultimately whether the others get deplatformed doesn't directly affect them, so what's the real difference here?
    > > how is this bad
    > they look silly
    > bad press
    This seems highly subjective & ultimately not really bad by any metric that matters.
    iamnothere · 1790349538 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    Muromec · 1790349777 · focus · HN ↗
    >Ultimately whether the others get deplatformed doesn't directly affect them, so what's the real difference here?
    The difference is -- if I know the effective policy, I can plan better and choose a different platform in advance (if the it's option (b)).
    >This seems highly subjective & ultimately not really bad by any metric that matters.
    Subjective opinions matter because people act on them (more) consistently than on objective facts.
    mcv · 1790345205 · focus · HN ↗
    Governments have a lot of laws that they don't enforce, or enforce only lightly. For example, weed is still illegal in Netherland, despite many decades of tolerating its use.
    Muromec · 1790345627 · focus · HN ↗
    It's illegal but you can't be prosecuted for usage or possession (unless you do it in a blowverbod area in front of a village cop that is having a bad day) -- the judge will ask why this person specifically is prosecuted if everybody around is smoking and will throw it away. It already happened in fact.
    iamnothere · 1790349304 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    hyperman1 · 1790364974 · focus · HN ↗
    I've heard it is only illegal becausr they signed treaties that would require them to keep it illegal, and they would have to leave these treaties. The USA president at the time hated weed and put it in every treaty he could.
    LinXitoW · 1790365186 · focus · HN ↗
    Every single issue they brought up in their blog post starts with even just 1% AI code. If they actually believed the absolutely absurd stuff they spew, banning it all would be the only logical solution.
    The current solution solves none of the issues, AND pisses off most sane people (mostly because their arguments are fabrications). They dropped the cake and shit on it too.

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