5 ms·

Also a few days before that: > I expect OSS to go the opposite direction: no human contribution allowed. Slop will be a nostalgic relic of 2025 & 2026. We sho

Also a few days before that: > I expect OSS to go the opposite direction: no human contribution allowed. Slop will be a nostalgic relic of 2025 & 2026. We should have seen this coming after they got acquired by Anthropic, but it's still disappointing. I'm not against large language models as a technology, just thoroughly disgusted how these "AI" companies rose to power, eating the software industry and the rest of society. It's creating a very unhealthy dependency. Think a few steps ahead and start preparing a slop-free software stack and community. That includes Zig and its ecosystem. Even if we (and future generations) don't manage to live entirely without slop, it's more important than ever to ensure a sustainable computing culture, free as in freedom.

tempaccount5050 6mo ago
Software companies have been about automating human labor since the invention of computers. It's the whole damn point. Why do you think finance used to be (sometimes still is) the head of the IT dept? Because we automated accounting away. Then typists. Then secretaries. Then drafting. Etc etc.
- claude_delusion 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tempaccount5050 6mo ago
    "ok guys, that's enough progress since now it's my job at stake, we can stop."
  - satvikpendem 6mo ago
    Don't make accounts just to add comments for a specific thread, you will get flagged.
- wiseowise 6mo ago
  > It's the whole damn point. Believe it or not, for some of us it’s not “the whole damn point”.
  - grim_io 6mo ago
    No one is taking away programming as a hobby from you :)
  - tempaccount5050 6mo ago
    Whether or not you want to admit that is up to you. If you're selling automation or efficiency gains, you're removing human labor.
    - gravypod 6mo ago
      My first "job" in computing, where someone else paid me for code, was in a research context where we were modeling radio propagation. Nothing about that was removing human labor. It in face eventually called for a bunch of humans to interact with each other. See: https://www.hamsci.org/basic-project/2017-total-solar-eclipse https://www.hamsci.org/basic-project/2017-total-solar-eclips... I don't think it is fair to claim computers are about putting people out of jobs.
      - Georgelemental 6mo ago
        Human labor could do the math by hand
        aaomidi 6mo ago
        And in fact, was how it was done.
      - tempaccount5050 6mo ago
        I think it is. Before computers you would have had to write all that down on paper logs. By using code, you saved yourself time. If it wasn't less labor, you wouldn't have done it that way.
- sdevonoes 6mo ago
  There are software components out there that are the backbone of our industry, and they are not governed by multibillion dollar companies. Linux, postgres, HTTP, TCP/IP, qemu,… It’s not that anthropic/google/openai/etc are unavoidable
  - tomnipotent 6mo ago
    > they are not governed by multibillion dollar companies Every tech you mentioned is absolutely governed by multibillion dollar companies. Something like 75-85% of OSS code is contributed by employees doing their day job. Most Linux and Postgres contributions come from those same employees. HTTP and TCP/IP are managed by standard bodies and industry working groups that, you guessed it, are governed by multibillion dollar companies. Red Hat and IBM are responsible for 40-60% of contributions to Qemu.
    - raj1298 6mo ago
      The usual model for OSS projects is that initially they are written for free. Then an inner circle forms and exploits the second generation of idealists who write entire large features without ever getting the same rights. Some of the inner circle move to corporations to increase their power and are joined by corporate developers (sometimes their bosses) to take over the project. A lot of corporate OSS development are entirely unnecessary rewrites or simple things like release management. So I'd put the number of useful code by employees much lower. But governed, hell yeah, I agree. The corporations crack the whip and oppress real contributors.
      - tomnipotent 5mo ago
        This is a nice fantasy, but that's all it is. Most of the code used by corporations is also mostly contributed to by other corporations. Contributions by volunteers is the exception for most of the projects in this context. I also don't think this is a bad thing.
    - dakiol 5mo ago
      The way I understood op is that we don't necessarily have to pay to use linux or postgres (when self hosting, for example). But we have to pay to use claude code... which sucks big time (also, open source models are behind private models)
foxes 6mo ago
How could it possibly be open source if it requires proprietary models developed by a few companies to writs the code. Seems like that would make open source entirely controlled by open ai, anthropic et al.
- brabel 6mo ago
  Open source and open weight models are already really good. I don’t think anyone really depends on the big AI companies anymore, if they go away, the open source models seem to be already sufficiently good to take the torch and will continue to improve thanks to research. They may require money to train , but the cost of that is already covered quite well and if these model became the mainstream way to use AI , more money from governments and research institutions would be poured into them. That is actually a very plausible scenario!
andy_ppp 6mo ago
It isn’t really slop anymore and it will keep improving.
shmichael 6mo ago
So you argue we discriminate based on who/what wrote the code, instead of what's in it? Let's take this to a different domain, self driving cars. Would you equally argue for human driving? I'm pretty sure over time it will become clear to everyone that machines will be able to outperform humans consistently at this task, to the degree that human driving will become illegal. But for now the press likes to focus on any failure of machine driving, taking for granted human drivers are the largest or second largest cause of premature death in many countries. Coding (in many ways, but not all) is a more open ended and versatile task than driving, so it's natural that current iterations seem untrustworthy, but ignoring the trajectory is erring on conservatism, and doesn't seem to me to be grounded in any sound reasoning.

tempaccount5050 6mo ago

Software companies have been about automating human labor since the invention of computers. It's the whole damn point. Why do you think finance used to be (sometimes still is) the head of the IT dept? Because we automated accounting away. Then typists. Then secretaries. Then drafting. Etc etc.

claude_delusion 6mo ago
[flagged]
- tempaccount5050 6mo ago
  "ok guys, that's enough progress since now it's my job at stake, we can stop."
- satvikpendem 6mo ago
  Don't make accounts just to add comments for a specific thread, you will get flagged.
wiseowise 6mo ago
> It's the whole damn point. Believe it or not, for some of us it’s not “the whole damn point”.
- grim_io 6mo ago
  No one is taking away programming as a hobby from you :)
- tempaccount5050 6mo ago
  Whether or not you want to admit that is up to you. If you're selling automation or efficiency gains, you're removing human labor.
  - gravypod 6mo ago
    My first "job" in computing, where someone else paid me for code, was in a research context where we were modeling radio propagation. Nothing about that was removing human labor. It in face eventually called for a bunch of humans to interact with each other. See: https://www.hamsci.org/basic-project/2017-total-solar-eclipse https://www.hamsci.org/basic-project/2017-total-solar-eclips... I don't think it is fair to claim computers are about putting people out of jobs.
    - Georgelemental 6mo ago
      Human labor could do the math by hand
      - aaomidi 6mo ago
        And in fact, was how it was done.
    - tempaccount5050 6mo ago
      I think it is. Before computers you would have had to write all that down on paper logs. By using code, you saved yourself time. If it wasn't less labor, you wouldn't have done it that way.
sdevonoes 6mo ago
There are software components out there that are the backbone of our industry, and they are not governed by multibillion dollar companies. Linux, postgres, HTTP, TCP/IP, qemu,… It’s not that anthropic/google/openai/etc are unavoidable
- tomnipotent 6mo ago
  > they are not governed by multibillion dollar companies Every tech you mentioned is absolutely governed by multibillion dollar companies. Something like 75-85% of OSS code is contributed by employees doing their day job. Most Linux and Postgres contributions come from those same employees. HTTP and TCP/IP are managed by standard bodies and industry working groups that, you guessed it, are governed by multibillion dollar companies. Red Hat and IBM are responsible for 40-60% of contributions to Qemu.
  - raj1298 6mo ago
    The usual model for OSS projects is that initially they are written for free. Then an inner circle forms and exploits the second generation of idealists who write entire large features without ever getting the same rights. Some of the inner circle move to corporations to increase their power and are joined by corporate developers (sometimes their bosses) to take over the project. A lot of corporate OSS development are entirely unnecessary rewrites or simple things like release management. So I'd put the number of useful code by employees much lower. But governed, hell yeah, I agree. The corporations crack the whip and oppress real contributors.
    - tomnipotent 5mo ago
      This is a nice fantasy, but that's all it is. Most of the code used by corporations is also mostly contributed to by other corporations. Contributions by volunteers is the exception for most of the projects in this context. I also don't think this is a bad thing.
  - dakiol 5mo ago
    The way I understood op is that we don't necessarily have to pay to use linux or postgres (when self hosting, for example). But we have to pay to use claude code... which sucks big time (also, open source models are behind private models)

foxes 6mo ago

How could it possibly be open source if it requires proprietary models developed by a few companies to writs the code. Seems like that would make open source entirely controlled by open ai, anthropic et al.

brabel 6mo ago
Open source and open weight models are already really good. I don’t think anyone really depends on the big AI companies anymore, if they go away, the open source models seem to be already sufficiently good to take the torch and will continue to improve thanks to research. They may require money to train , but the cost of that is already covered quite well and if these model became the mainstream way to use AI , more money from governments and research institutions would be poured into them. That is actually a very plausible scenario!

andy_ppp 6mo ago

It isn’t really slop anymore and it will keep improving.

shmichael 6mo ago

So you argue we discriminate based on who/what wrote the code, instead of what's in it? Let's take this to a different domain, self driving cars. Would you equally argue for human driving? I'm pretty sure over time it will become clear to everyone that machines will be able to outperform humans consistently at this task, to the degree that human driving will become illegal. But for now the press likes to focus on any failure of machine driving, taking for granted human drivers are the largest or second largest cause of premature death in many countries. Coding (in many ways, but not all) is a more open ended and versatile task than driving, so it's natural that current iterations seem untrustworthy, but ignoring the trajectory is erring on conservatism, and doesn't seem to me to be grounded in any sound reasoning.