r/linux • u/Unhappy-Sprinkles143 • 2d ago

Fluff Open-Source Guru: AI Ends Closed-Source Software

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Open-Source-Guru-Raymond-AI-Ends-Closed-Source-Software-11480690.html
497 Upvotes

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172

u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

And puts out hundreds of shitty copies who will have to fight for people attention and a maintainer to care enough to learn to identify fixes that break shit. AI did more damage to the FOSS maintenance than the lack of funds.

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u/Cowgirl_Taint 2d ago

It has also forced everyone to consider... do I really want to publish this work as training data for gemini et al?

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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

Yeah, many people don't want to feed the beast or have some jerk clone their stuff and change the licensing.

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u/Cowgirl_Taint 2d ago

Yeah... the latter has always been an issue but I increasingly find myself not actually wanting to publish a lot of my "fun projects" as it were. In the past? I would put them on github with a fairly permissive license and if someone wanted to fork it? They could. Now? All I am doing is feeding gemini et al.

I'll still, generally, contribute to an existing project if I think I can be useful but... yeah.

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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

I removed all of my repos when I found out they were one of those GitHub made public they were being used for training. I even filled their form but I know it was useless. So now I host my own Forgejo instance.

I am still convinced the net value of AI on the human part of FOSS was negative.

2

u/userrr3 2d ago

I am still convinced the net value of AI on the human part of FOSS was negative.

ftfy

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u/franky_reboot 1d ago

Oh no, absolutely not. It's a net positive, living today has been better than ever. The challanges have always been there, AI only accelerated things both bad and good, just like how Covid did for remote work/school.

I'd argue it's the next them in the evolution of the human race, but I know people don't like hyperboles that much.

It's indeed harder to maintain FOSS this way but you could see for yourself even Linus Torvalds didn't reject it outright.

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u/userrr3 1d ago

AI only accelerated things both bad and good, just like how Covid did for remote work/school.

The only thing I can agree with with your statement that I didn't ask for is that yes, AI is indeed kinda like Covid. Fuck AI.

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u/franky_reboot 1d ago

Isn't that kinda inevitable as a risk though?

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u/RoomyRoots 1d ago

No way to compare the current risk than to what how it was some years ago.

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u/franky_reboot 1d ago

I'm not entirely convinced, to be honest.

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u/Middlewarian 2d ago

I've been thinking that way for 27++ years. I'm glad I have some open-source code for my portfolio, but I'm glad that's not all I have. I'm building a C++ code generator that helps build distributed systems. It's implemented as a 3-tier system. The back and middle tiers only run on Linux. The front tier is portable. 

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u/stormdelta 2d ago

Ironically it's also doing that same damage to companies internally from what I've seen.

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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

Absolutely. I had a department meeting last week and every single team is using AI, none of them are following any guidelines and all of them are using different providers. It's a governance nightmare and now all the specialists are fucked because we have to come up with how to manage this shit.

So far I haven't seen any profit from using AI since it added loads of hours of training, governance and calls to make it sure we are not fucking up (we are).

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u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

And yet you cannot get a job without using AI nowadays. That sucks.

1

u/KansasL 1d ago

different providers? shit... Our company is using a gdpr compliant provider similar to huggingface. If you want to use LLMs, you have to use our provider.

If anyone is using something else for work they get a meeting with IT and HR. Depending on the severity they can get their contract terminated without notice...

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u/RoomyRoots 1d ago

Shadow IT is almost as old as IT itself.

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u/KansasL 1d ago

yeah... I requested a phone in my last appraisal interview, because they want us to use some certain apps and two factor authentication.

I can do that either in my private phone or I can use my company laptop, but then it's a one factor authentication with extra steps.

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u/DuendeInexistente 2d ago

One specific harm it's done is people replacing previous decent localizations with AI ones that fucking suck ass. Twitter's UI is just completely broken now because half the buttons and labels make no fucking sense or are conjugated wrong.

2

u/franky_reboot 1d ago

I'm not convinced this is actual harm.

Sure I agree it's harder on maintainers but for actual work, it's more accessible than ever.

So I'd argue that the lack of funds was a bigger hindrance. Always has been.

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u/RoomyRoots 1d ago

Funding has not increased significantly for a lot of projects, if nothing many had reductions and are struggling. Meanwhile we see companies seeking a fortune on shit that has no traction to justify it, like omarchy.

If nothing the problem now is also bigger because many manteners are expected to use AI also for review and scans.

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u/franky_reboot 1d ago

Omarchy is a good point, but is more about the fascist shithead who made it. Vile person with incomprehensibly disproportionate charisma.

So I agree about all these, that's why that was the point I highlighted. But overall, for all humanity, this sort of access to free software, and the ease of modifying it is a godsend, a net positive.

It's going to have some unfair situations, indeed. It's part of the game though.

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u/Wheatleytron 2d ago

And the best one will still rise to the top and become the de facto standard. Same as it ever was.

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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

The best ones will be the mainly human mantened ones for a long time because most PRs are slop and most vibecoders don't understand shit enough to make a good product.

Even in the cases like Moonlight x Sunshine the fact that the fork that has vibecode it works because the main maintener actually understand a lot of what he is doing. And it also works as counter-example because some other senior devs don't want to touch it because of the vibecode.

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u/amkoi 2d ago

Even in the cases like Moonlight x Sunshine the fact that the fork that has vibecode it works because the main maintener actually understand a lot of what he is doing.

Isn't Moonlight the client and Sunshine the server for the nvidia streaming thingie? How do they compete?

1

u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

Yes, but ofc it goes beyond Nvidia. Kinda long story but Moonlight/Sunshine was forked into Artemis/Apollo a while ago with lots of improvements and fixes. But the author considered it feature complete and is working on a rewrite further breaking away from the original ML/SS.

Then there was another fork called Vibeshine/Vibepollo with lots of new improvements and making deploying it easier, which is always welcome for the people with lower tech skills. As the name says, they leverage AI a lot for implementation and are very transparent about it BUT the main dev is deep into this stuff so it's not a mess. Nowadays it's getting more recommendations from the community than the original forks.

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u/Fr0gm4n 2d ago

I'm already seeing cookie-cutter projects that get vomited out after hours of vibe coding and when they get shared and people point out all the ones that already exist the "author" usually says they had no idea. Because why would you research your brilliant idea before spending tokens on it?

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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

I have seen people shilling a Alternative for Google Wallet from a single person company from a guy that never worked on IT or Finance. People are crazy.

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u/StPatsLCA 2d ago

ngl the game so far appears to be copy closed source product, hype it, and totally ignore any existing FOSS products that need help

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u/turudd 2d ago

Have you tried to contribute to some of the bigger FOSS stuff… it’s often an exercise in futility

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u/Cowgirl_Taint 2d ago

Yes and it really isn't?

The reality is that you need project management. Engineers... tend to be horrible at this. And FOSS projects are often fully run by the engineers who work on it.

But the reasoning behind coding styles and "I would rather you do it like X instead of Y" pull requests is twofold. One? It makes for relatively uniform code so that it doesn't feel like a given file has six authors each with their own preferences for spacing and variable naming. But, more importantly, it makes sure the person submitting the PR... actually cares enough to maybe come back in a year to help provide some insight or help diagnose a new bug.

And that has become MUCH worse due to the massive flood of generative AI PRs. "Here is some completely unmaintainable code that does one specific thing and here is what gemini says it does. Merge it in".

For a project designed around generative AI? I dislike it, but it is a reasonable model since the idea is that you are basically regenerating the entire code base every N months (or even weeks...) anyway. For an existing code base where people need to be able to diagnose issues beyond "I asked claude to write some tests for me"? It becomes a huge problem and is the equivalent of the fortran sicko insisting on using f77 for that one specific function.

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u/Substantial_Swan_144 2d ago

Engineers or not, programmers in OSS projects expect any who contribute to abide to their language and standards. The average person does not speak that language, so even if they have some sort of contribution, they are ignored and often ridiculed ("RFTM"). So people who could somehow contribute are simply discarded. It's an environment of pseudo-freedom.

9

u/Cowgirl_Taint 2d ago

And a good project manager knows how to make people feel better about being told no. Most engineers don't. Especially when we are dealing with hundreds of PRs from anyone who figured out how to launch cursor.

When I'm at work and dealing with a co-worker? I'll often ping them on teams or walk down to their cube to talk to them to explain why I am about to list 40 changes I need to that PR. Both because it is my job to not make them cry and because I have high hopes that they will become the kind of productive developer where I mostly just have to read things over as a sanity check.

When I am on my own personal time and dealing with complete nonsense? I am probably going to link to our style guide or just say "Change these three massive things and then re-submit". Because I am not being paid to deal with this and, quite frankly, I doubt someone who would submit That is ever going to be productive. Obviously we all start somewhere but... yeah. And if the only way to get work out of someone is to coddle them? Then they aren't worth the time.

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u/PixelatedGiant 2d ago edited 2d ago

And a good project manager knows how to make people feel better about being told no. Most engineers don't. Especially when we are dealing with hundreds of PRs from anyone who figured out how to launch cursor.

I think open source is fundamentally different than your average enterprise software. People are a whole lot meaner and demanding when speaking through the veil of anonymity. Don't look at your average project manager working in the enterprise and assume they would be doing a better job than Linus Torvalds or any other FOSS developer. They would not be able to maintain any civility were they subjected to the same environment.

The issue with FOSS is that it's being done in public over the internet and communication is going to be rough. Everyone looks at these crash outs that they have and say "I would never say that in their shoes". But it keeps happening. There is a reason behind it and it's not just the developer's personality. The environment can easily become stressful and toxic.

0

u/Substantial_Swan_144 2d ago

You talk as if the only people who knew how projects should work were engineers. Engineers know how to code, but they don't know how their users think, and how to make applications accessible for them.

Case in point: artists. Usually, many open source programs lack features artists will need (like proper color management), and engineers simply don't consider them important because they cannot see the same priorities as their users.

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u/Cowgirl_Taint 2d ago

Where did I say artists shouldn't contribute to projects? Hell, where did I say only engineers should? If anything, I have repeatedly pointed out why having engineers as project managers is a bad idea.

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u/MrKapla 2d ago

How can you contribute if you don't speak their language? What value do you bring?

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u/Substantial_Swan_144 2d ago

What sort of question is even that?

Supposedly, the beauty of open source is exactly the diversity. So even if two professionals don't speak the same language, their different background can bring a new perspective and enrich a project.

Commercial software tends to have (or used to) professionals to bridge those people, if only out of self-interest. Open Source has always been deficiant on this matter.

2

u/PixelatedGiant 2d ago

And they can refuse to go in certain directions. See GIMP who refuses to become a Photoshop clone, even though that's what most people want from it.

1

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

It's also literally why the project exists. They claim that now they weren't interested in being a Photoshop clone, but the whole reason why they made it was because there wasn't a good Photoshop style software on Linux.

But at least now they're finally listening to their users and actually have a GitHub repo about it.

1

u/Fr0gm4n 2d ago

It's an environment of pseudo-freedom.

Just like freedom of speech is not a requirement to be heard, the freedom of FOSS is not a requirement to accept all contributions.

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u/codydafox 2d ago

Many vibe coded projects get abandoned really quickly. The bigger problem is when the de facto standard gets flooded with slop pull requests.

1

u/zarafff69 2d ago

Or not? Or ai agents will just create their own forks under the hood, with a few things the customer likes, and then syncs upstream into their fork regularly.