- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.world
- techtakes@awful.systems
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.world
- techtakes@awful.systems
Direct link to the LLM Policy Discussion: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/work_items/187
Example of KDE dev rejecting environmental consideration:
Example of KDE devs not wanting to require LLM use be disclosed.
And all of this is coming right after the debacle with an AI slop project being allowed to give a presentation at Akademy, and the person asking how this was allowed being blocked by KDE:
https://lemmy.nz/post/42029517
as well as the discussion thread bringing up legitimate concerns about AI usage being closed:
https://discuss.kde.org/t/sorry-to-bring-up-a-contentious-topic-kde-ai-llm-policy/46333/164
As someone who genuinely loves KDE, and has even donated to the project multiple times, I sadly have to accept that the majority of KDE have hopped onto the Pro-AI train, and they will not be dissuaded otherwise.
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I am locking the thread because I consider this cherry picking comments from KDE maintainers misinformation. Let’s wait and see where they go… The discussion as to include gen AI code, in which ways, how much, etc. is something that many projects (if not all) are undergoing. Let’s be respectful to their open decision processes! This respectfulness needs to be regardless of whether we agree or not with what they do. Once they make a decision, sure, go ahead with flaming commentaries and endorsing alternatives or forks (if they appeared)
If slop coding is so great why is everyone so adamant about hiding it from users?
If you’re not willing to disclose something, maybe take that as a hint.
As a user, I think this is the biggest issue I have with this policy. Disclosure is a big part of open source and hiding whatever tools are used is fundamentally against that philosophy.
Would you be willing to expand on what you mean by disclosure being a big part of open source?
I ask because it has not been my experience that OSS developers have ever had a habit of disclosing what tools they use. If you are lucky then a repo has instructions for contributors, that may describe tools being used, or CI configuration for running tests and linters, but most projects have neither. Mostly you just get instructions for building the project, but sometimes not even that
In some projects you’ll see a kind of a colophon section listing all the tools used in making some software. Not just obviously things like libraries, but OS, text editor, IDE, art tools, or even inspirations.
It’s not everywhere, but it’s frequent enough, and different from how proprietary software credits (or doesn’t) to make it a distinction imo.
I feel like using ai is like using drugs, they’re bad, but regulating them is muuuuuuuch better than just prohibiting, people will use it anyways.
It’s not a one to one comparison but I feel encouraging witch hunts will definitely do more harm than normalizing it.
To be clear, I don’t want it either, I’m acknowledging it’s the lesser of two evils.
I’m 12 and this is deep level of take right here
I feel like using ai is like using drugs, they’re bad, but regulating them is muuuuuuuch better than just prohibiting, people will use it anyways.
crime won’t happen because it is illegal?
How would you even enforce it. Its possible to make extensive use of local LLMs and have them write no code at all that you submit. Is that use of AI? Should it be disclosed? If you did you would get puritans calling it slop regardless of the result too.
Having an public policy that permits the use of LLMs feels like the opposite of “hiding it”. If a project has such a policy, then you can be pretty sure that LLMs are being used, even if you cannot tell exactly what commits involved the use of LLMs. It’s probably also a lot more discoverable than disclosures in commits or PRs, which most users wouldn’t know how to look for
Realistically, I think everything actively maintained is going to have some LLM code in it by now. You can either accept it or go mad, tbh.
Art is one thing, and I can see why we wouldn’t want the computer doing that if you have the resources to employ people, but code is rarely art. Most of it was already slop. It’s had things shoehorned into it by shouty managers decades ago. Claude is far from perfect, but so are most of the people doing the gruntwork.
Most of it was already slop. It’s had things shoehorned into it by shouty managers decades ago.
Manager: You have to get this done by end of week…
Dev: itll be really shitty and kind of work. Can we clean it up after?
Manager: of course!
Dev: its done, we can ship it. Ill start cleaning it up.
Manager: No, you need to do this other thing by tomorrow!
Ive had some good ones that did honor the agreement when pushed to rush things, but its not common.
“accept it or go mad” always just comes across as extremely desperate, lol
nooooo you don’t understand you HAVE to accept it! There’s no other choice!! Nooo stop rejecting it you’re not allowed to do that!!!
You can reject it in your own projects. That’s about it. If you’re open source and accepting any submissions, you’ve no idea if they’re LLM generated or not.
Except for all the open source libraries you probably use that also use LLMs, or you find a blog post someone wrote explaining how to do something and they used LLMs
You can avoid direct knowledgeable usage, but you’ll still have LLM code in your codebase.
You have no idea if they copy pasted proprietary code either, but you try your best to keep it out.
I can accept some trace amount of rat shit is going to get into my granola, but I am not willing to say that means I’m allowing rat shit in my cereal.
Please at least try to keep it out, as I do when I’m making my own granola. Yes I know it’s hard, but let’s just try.
because yall gonna go on a witch hunt at a whiff of llm, regardless of the final code or product quality?
Somehow you consider even a little pushback crazy but won’t listen to people when they ask you not to jump into AI madness headfirst wearing blinders?
when they ask you not to jump into AI madness headfirst wearing blinders?
That’s not what you’re asking and they are not doing that. The policy is quite sane. Ye of little faith (in the developers) were perfectly fine using this free software these same people wrote beforehand, but now according to the general sentiment in the comments they have all suddenly turned into idiots who don’t know what they’re doing and we should all abandon KDE etc etc.
Because users are dumdums who chimp out at the smallest of changes and mindlessly rebel just to feel important?
I feel like you’re describing the people who are crazy about AI right now.
It starts with “oh, just clean up any code generated” and “you must understand what your code does” and then in a decade that person won’t remember how to code at all because they self-lobotomized themselves for the convenience.
I don’t think becoming a worse coder is necessarily a big problem as long as code review really happens, as long as the human in the picture retains their algorithmic thinking there is no lobotomy. Of course we all know how human laziness works, so thinking that people would actually keep reviewing code after they find no major issues N times in a row is a pipe dream.
And I don’t know about you guys, but I for one dislike reading someone else’s code. LLM generated blocks can be especially bad for testing my sanity.
Yeah when I’m reading code and it becomes obvious there was zero thought behind a bit of logic, I lose all will to care about understanding the code or even what it does.
time to stop donating then. Ai crap results in death by a thousand cuts.
I switched to Niri a few months ago as an experiment but now I guess I will not go back to KDE anytime soon
World sees AI doing awful things like nudifying children, making nearly every software we use worse, and stealing the world’s knowledge to sell back to us, and generally dislikes AI.
Moronic software devs with massive egos: "WE SHOULD USE AI SEE HOW EASY THIS MAKES MY LIFE NOW I DONT HAVE TO LEARN. "
Also them: “I swear I just use it to augment my work! I’d never take a shortcut and eventually keep taking shortcuts and outsource my thinking! Humans notoriously NEVER take shortcuts!”
Guys wtf are we even doing anymore.
AI is not a thing, it doesn’t act, it doesn’t think. Humans do. Humans nudify children, humans enshitify software, humans steal content
Exactly.
All of the Anti-AI people are actually anti-capitalists, they’re just not finished diagnosing the problem.
AI isn’t building data centers, capitalists are. They’re doing it in such a destructive and rapid manner because they’re trying to leverage their infinite amount of cash into a future monopoly. If it wasn’t AI it would have been some other product.
Fighting the product and ignoring the actual human beings who are making these destructive decisions is only adding to the smoke screen that shifts blame away from names like Huang, Altman, and Musk.
I think you can be anticapitalist and also anti-AI. I’m certainly both
I think you can be anticapitalist and also anti-AI. I’m certainly both
Yes, the venn is basically a circle.
All of the ‘bad things AI is doing’ are bad things that capitalists are doing.
Nobody is actually angry at AI for solving age old mathematical problems, folding proteins or locating cancers. It’s not the technology that people care about.
People are angry at rapacious capitalism and are misdirecting it at the technology and not the rapacious capitalists. Anti-AI is just Anti-Capitalism for new leftists.
Same here! I don’t care who is responsible for it, no matter where on the political spectrum the creators are, I’m still not supporting it.
it doesn’t act,
I don’t disagree with anything else you are saying or the sentiment, but with the rise of “AI Agents” it is becoming more common that the AI actually does something. It seems like there is a new story every few days about an agent deleting an entire database or buying plane tickets or sending an e-mail to the FBI. Unfortunately, we have people giving it more and more permissions and ability to “just act” and it is only getting worse.
Most of those ‘news’ stories are sensationalized to the point of fiction.
You sound like “Guns don’t kill people! Robbers do!”
So I’m going to ask you, would you give a gun to a child? Would you? Just answer that
Except AI won’t kill you
What in the bullshit bad faith non sequitor is this.
And it wrecks the environment, and it stunts the user’s intelligence without actually being able to do anything truly original or novel, and it makes worse, buggier, less secure, less maintainable software. The list goes on and on
You cannot tell from the code necessarily anyway so anti-AI policies are hard to enforce. In the end the developer (or AI wielding human) is responsible for the code quality and its license which is what matters. All this discussion feels just like the usual culture war dividing the community. I’m more concerned about the intentions of people adding fuel to the fire.
In the end the developer (or AI wielding human) is responsible for the code quality and its license which is what matters.
They literally may not have any control over the license, that is one of the many big problems people have. Please read the article linked by OP about the copyrightabilty of LLM generated code - https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260825-01.html. It depends heavily on how they used the LLM, so if there is zero disclosure required the entire project could get into licensing hell down the road.
Yes obviously the code you commit must be yours and you need to make sure it is. That is already a rule, what’s the point of telling people how to work above that?
Due to the nature of LLMs being trained on existing code there is a chance that generated code is lifted verbatim from another piece of software whose license doesn’t permit the copy without attribution. Its a potential legal minefield that I think FOSS project should just steer clear of until the legal landscape surrounding generative AI cools off some.
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Yeah, the people getting upset at this are dumb as rocks.
Guess I’ll stay on xfce…
The stupidity of bandwagoners is on full display in this comment section.
So many people say they reject AI, but then how can you even use desktop Linux?
The kernel & the popular browsers have an increasing number of AI contributions, there is no escaping this.
As it is impossible to completely avoid AI use with Linux, I must content myself with only minimization instead of complete elimination, as I won’t let the pursuit of perfection mean I just give up entirely. Any reduction is still meaningful, just as it’s still worthwhile to minimize fossil fuel usage and meat consumption as much as is reasonably possible.
This is all completely out of your control. You cannot tell people how to work in opensource and projects are completely unable to control if someone uses AI (or which one) to perform tasks, since it is not visible in the result. The easiest thing for you to do, if you don’t want to take part in it, is to put down your phone and go outside.
…No it isn’t? I can choose what software I use, there are projects making efforts to avoid AI as much as is possible, and most contributors tend to follow guidelines, so having no-AI rules, while not 100% effective at avoiding AI code, will still drastically reduce what gets in, which is all I’m aiming for, and which is absolutely achievable.
I’ve noticed that virtually all Pro-AI people are constantly pushing this idea that resistance is futile, and that we all just have to accept AI into all aspects of our lives, almost like a cult. I even saw some if that rhetoric in the KDE proposal this thread is about.
You can drink the AI koolaid as much as you want, but you’re not going to stop me from trying to limit it in my life wherever possible, and I’ll continue to advocate for others to abstain for a multitude of reasoned arguments as well.
Modern society is built on destruction and cruelty. Doesn’t mean I can advice somebody to give up living in society and sound smart.
To suggest that “compromising on ideals for practicality” is the same as “roll-over and accept it” is dishonest and only done by people who want to win the argument by attrition so they get what they want.
I’m personally trying to switch to NetBSD. But, it’s not going well. My laptop can’t right-click in X under NetBSD, e.g.
A lot of the ecosystems I used to enjoy and support, I simply can’t anymore. Firefox, Linux, GHC, Debian, KDE, etc., etc. It’s a distressing time for me.
Can relate, everything I used to think of as a safe haven, a return to 90’s style computing, is seemingly being corrupted, and the few remaining options we have require a rather big sacrifice in usability.
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I love KDE (as a DE), but now I hate KDE (as a community).
Is there any fork (whether it’s an stablished one or it’s an emerging one) that outright bans AI, or that at least doesn’t explicitly embrace it?
KDE is huge, you can’t just fork all of it (of course technically you could, but it is not much use). You maybe could fork individual projects, a bit like https://vim-classic.org/
I was thinking of having some kind of online list for packages without AI stuff. Of course a 100% slop free desktop installation is probably impossible nowadays, it would still be interesting to see how far one can go.
Such a list already exists!
Edit: i read the comment wrong, this is kind of the opposite list lmao. But it’s still useful so imma leave the comment up
There’s also https://noailist.org/, which is based on projects (not just OSS) committing to not using AI. That’s probably also the only viable approach, if you want a list of projects without AI stuff, since projects can easily be using AI without it being visible to third parties inspecting the output of the projects
This site is great thank you!
Omg, I knew Open Slopware and a few more, but not that one! Thank you!
Yeah, the point is that I need something that has many features only available in KDE.
Would it work if it’s done from a previous, presumably untainted commit? I know it’s possible that I’m being a bit ingenuous, but I still think that doing something is better that doing anything — just as there are explicitly anti-AI forks of other complex projects such as Firefox (both mobile [IronFox] and desktop [Konform], and both mostly untainted), and even a reimplementation of Linux in Rust (HyperOS, this one totally untainted).
If not, I have some quite good architectural ideas for a new DE, because other big DEs are or ambiguous about AI (for example, Cinnamon, MATE, GNOME or COSMIC, Hyprland), or are not as extensible as KDE (COSMIC, MATE, Cinnamon, LXQt).
Would it work if it’s done from a previous, presumably untainted commit?
Theoretically yes, but at the moment I have more than 150 KDE packages installed; you would need to do this for each one and then make sure that they actually work together in this specific combination. Then, for each package you would need to check if any security bugfixes exist upstream that don’t exist in your fork and backport these.
I would say that is the bare minimum; you probably also want any bugfixes that are implemented upstream.
I guess with a team of a few people this would be doable, at least for some time; sooner or later some dependency (e.g. systemd) will be updated in such a way that your fork is no longer compatible and then you will either have to integrate the slop code from upstream to make it work, or do that on your own.
By the way, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Desktop_Environment is a fork of KDE 3, but that has no support for e.g. dark mode.
By the way, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Desktop_Environment is a fork of KDE 3, but that has no support for e.g. dark mode.
Oof, I didn’t remember that one existed, and has even better extendability than KDE (and tabbing support, which I love), but yeah, there are some problems as that one.
I think I’ll try to support them in any way I can, and to contribute with anything I can.
I know about programming and computer sciences (I’m studying that), although I don’t know anything about actual coding, and I have some big-ish amount of architectural ideas (although I don’t know how good these are).
I’m also a music producer and sound designer.
I hope I can make at least a bit of difference.
Good. Fuck ludites.
Why?
So, who’s gonna start a fork?
Starting a fork is easy, but who is gonna maintain it? KDE is huge, at 8 million lines of code for the core software, so you’ll need a large amount of people who are willing to work on the fork to keep parity with KDE
That seems like a significant LoC to wrangle. Maybe you can swing some tools at it to reduce your workload. OOPS YOU’RE A SLOPERATOR NOW
/s cause some of y’all need it
As a Gnome developer, we outright ban AI contributions
Well yeah, their shit already looks AI. AI + AI = ???
EDIT: it’s also just that one dev’s decision which doesn’t matter because RedHat, so using “we” here is literally false
Wonder how much money did get Nicco from the South African racists if he’s going all in on the brain-rotting LLMs…
