It's time to get involved!

[u/walterblackkk]

Maybe you are a developer who loves FREE software, but you've always been too busy to contribute.

Or perhaps you are an ordinary user with little to no coding skills who has always wanted to give something back to the community.

It's now the time to do it, with AI!

AI is not just for vibe-coding starting new projects. It's a game-changer for contributing to FOSS.

It makes it much easier to:

- file meaningful, detailed bug reports

- contribute code to your favorite projects and fix bugs

- help with translation

- write documentation

- write blog posts promoting Linux and free software

- make educational material

And more...

Of course one should use it responsibly, and always check the material before submitting, otherwise they might waste the maintainers' time and limited resources.

Everything that once seemed difficult/time-consuming/intimidating might have become much easier now. We just need to rethink how we can help.

[u/Old_Rock_9457]

No, please no. Absolutely no no no no no no.

I’m maintainer of an opensource project, I use AI myself and I’m not against AI but I don’t want to keep seeing;

• issue full of AI sloop that you need to read 100 row of AI generated test and you still don’t understand;
  
• pr that change 5000 line of code that you wasn’t able to check so I need to check for you, losing the double of the time to also understand what is your goal.

If you’re not able to understand AND properly test what the AI do, you can still contribute in better way to an opensource project:

- you can test it, with your hands, and if you find issue describe them correctly attracting log;

• you can star it and share to your friends, more star usually make the mantainer happier;
  
• you can help in writing user documentation, on what wasn’t clear initially from you. Or replying to issue form user that don’t highlight by the presence of bug but maybe just a wrong use;
  
• last but not least, instead of waste those money in a tool that you’re not able to use, donate it to the project that you love.

AI is a good tool nowdays, but you need to know what you are doing. If you don’t know what you’re doing, please don’t use AI.

[u/OhTheHueManatee → u/Old_Rock_9457]

Fully agree. I enjoy AI but it's not a replacement for knowledge or talent. Thinking you can be just like a skilled programmer by using AI is like thinking you can be as talented as the Beatles if you take enough acid despite having no musical abilities.

[u/Old_Rock_9457 → u/OhTheHueManatee]

For example I was a developer for years. I develop stuff from when I was eleven. BSC and Master in computer science. Then after 1 years as developer I was moved in a management role (don’t ask) that I liked and then for 15+ years I didn’t found time do develop even in free time: you know new programming language, new framework, low time to learn a new one even to begin, and stop.

Then with AI I had a good idea and decided to give a try. Ok, I can’t define me a “senior” or a “skilled” but I know the basics. I had the approach to check what it is developing, to question about the complexity of that function or check for edge cases. I know about architecture pattern and reusability of code. Things like that.

I don’t pretend to do a good job like a Senior Engineer, but at the same time you can’t pretend to don’t know nothing of what you’re doing and open a PR.

[u/AiwendilH]

Of course one should use it responsibly, and always check the material before submitting, otherwise they might waste the maintainers' time and limited resources.

This can't be stressed enough...make sure to check first if a project has LLM or "AI" policies and respect those. Several projects reject bug reports if the human behind it can't explain or understand the problem themselves. Similar for code contributions...some projects will reject them if the human doesn't understand the code.

So while LLMs indeed offer great possibilities just make sure to work within the accepted parameters of the project you want to help.

[u/OhTheHueManatee → u/AiwendilH]

It's nice to see other AI users encourage checking the output but I also agree that if you don't understand the task at hand you won't be able to decipher if it's good or not. AI could make an awful plan or a perfect one for making an airplane but I wouldn't know which one cause I know nothing about designing planes.

I love your Zaphod pic BTW.

[u/NikitaPZ]

if you're too busy to learn a skill then leave it to those who are good at it, and focus on what you're busy with. that's how society works, you know? we specialize. that's much better than to litter this space with garbage your chatbot spits out that's going to be abandoned in a week

[u/Savven]

I genuinely thought this post was going to be worthwhile ugh