Post by @mcc@mastodon.social

@mcc ohhhh that's why its called scum

@mcc I think you generalized a lot there. Saying that "Linux"... wouldn't it be, in this case, some specific #Linux distribution within the sea of Linux distributions?

Thad

@Thad@brontosin.space last wk.

@lobocode No.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/linus-torvalds-to-critics-of-ai-coding-in-linux-fork-it-or-just-walk-away/

Ars Technica

Linus Torvalds to critics of AI coding in Linux: "Fork it. Or just walk away."

Creator says he will "very loudly ignore" those arguing for a ban on AI tools.

lobo :freebsd_logo: :emacs:

@lobocode@hachyderm.io last wk.

@Thad AAHHH, but then it's not at the user level (they are devs using it in their #development). This, unfortunately, cannot be controlled.

Cheeseness

@Cheeseness@mastodon.social last wk.

@lobocode The ScummVM stuff isn't at the user level either.

This is a question of shared community values and commitment more than it is one of control IMO. I struggle to see a project choosing to adopt a policy of rejecting slop contributions as fundamentally different to a project choosing to adopt a F/OSS licence even though it's not possible to reliably control bad faith contributions (they happen sometimes, it sucks, but that shared commitment helps us deal with it and persist beyond it).

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

RE: https://awoo.space/@noiob/117430472896097918

Hoping someone wrote down the last commit number before the "slop ok as long as you say it's not slop" policy was adopted. 100% of my attention span for that problem is currently tasked to "can I make a version of Servo with the pre-slop version of Harfbuzz"

Cassandrich

@dalias@hachyderm.io last wk.

@mcc Harfbuzz should be reasonably easy to rewrite from scratch if needed. And I mean actually write, not vibeslop.

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

@dalias i would never describe anything related to unicode as "easy". tractable, sometimes.

Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO

@rcombs@social.treehouse.systems last wk.

@mcc hasn't harfbuzz only used AI to prototype new experimental feature surface?

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

@rcombs That was not the understanding I got from the comments of the harfbuzz maintainer with the release of harfbuzz 13. It is possible my understanding or my notes are incorrect.

margot

@emaytch@mastodon.social last wk.

@mcc honestly wondering what kind of updates they could've done that would justify going slop. like how many people were champing at the bit for 'more games from the 90s'

margot

@emaytch@mastodon.social last wk.

@mcc that's the thing that keeps getting me about these small open-source projects doing slop code-- you're shooting yourself in the foot in the long run for like. barely anything really

mr_harm

@mr_harm@mastodon.social last wk.

@emaytch @mcc have you thought about how much work these small open source projects still can be?

I am not pro AI, there's lots of things to object about. But I also find the entitlement in some corners of the OSS Community quite interesting.

"You're giving us something for free but we'll complain how you manage the workload of that project since we don't like the tools you've used" - that's how that sounds.

with Linux you get a huge well managed project that runs on anything for free

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

@mr_harm I would rather they stop making the product than make it using AI. If they stop making the project, I can potentially find a way to keep it going. If they secretly put AI slop in the project and then auto-update it onto my computer, now I have a big complicated problem. I have to do detective work to figure out when they added the slop (they're usually not honest), and find an alternative. If they'd never made it in the first place, I could have used something else to start with.

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

@mr_harm People did work to make Linux, but also I did work to move my computer from Windows to Linux, actually a lot of work. I value that time more than I would value money. I paid for Windows and I paid for MacOS so I would have paid for Linux. I adopted Linux not because it was free, but because it had good values. Now it has bad values. If they hadn't lied to me about their values, I would have *started* by switching to BSD, and saved a lot of time. I'd like that time back.

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

@mr_harm There's also this weird thing about "entitlement". If you use AI to write software, you're stealing my work which the AI was trained on— which isn't a physical harm but is very upsetting— and you're harming the . I am not necessarily entitled to an operating system but I am entitled to a global mean temperature under whatever degrees we could have kept it under if the OSS community hadn't decided to use the global warming machine to write OSS.

I repeat: They could have simply not.

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

@mr_harm On an unrelated note, you sure are writing a lot of AI defense for someone who is "not pro-AI".

mr_harm

@mr_harm@mastodon.social last wk.

@emaytch @mcc I understand that you object the used technology so much that you chose not to use the SW. You're free to fork it and put your own time and work into it.

But telling others how they should manage their projects on their free time is quite entitled.

Sarah The Witch :heart_trans:

@SarahFaey@peoplemaking.games last wk.

mr_harm

@mr_harm@mastodon.social last wk.

@SarahFaey I don't think maintainability is a problem if the project maintainer knows what she/he's doing.

A pre-AI well maintained project will stay the same: not every AI contributed fix needs to be accepted. But yeah, for repos with bad maintenance the problems will increase.

The code quality for self written stuff (for example in my code) will also likely be worse than what an Ai model can produce.

I'm with you in all the reasons why to object the technology ( I'm not a fan myself)

mr_harm

@mr_harm@mastodon.social last wk.

@SarahFaey but I also stand firm on my opinion:

As long as you don't contribute to a project (financially, with hand-written code or otherwise) and you benefit by using it for free, you do not get a say in how the project is maintained.

Also: if you don't like it, start doing something about it instead of complaining. Call someone with influence. Join your local politics to fight that data center. Do environmental education. The maintainer of a project you use for free is not your enemy!

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

@mr_harm @SarahFaey You have no idea what we are or aren't doing. Fuck you!

mr_harm

@mr_harm@mastodon.social last wk.

@SarahFaey attacking them for allowing AI is just disrespectful to them, nothing else.

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

@mr_harm @SarahFaey If people are tolerating generative AI use in software, art, generation of human-readable text, or creation of posters for taquerias,

then in fact I do not respect them

Anatoly Shashkin💾

@dosnostalgic@mastodon.social last wk.

@mcc Sev started approving ai stuff only in June of this year (students were brought in for Summer of Code), so anything before that.

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

RE: https://awoo.space/@noiob/117430472896097918

Hoping someone wrote down the last commit number before the ScummVM "slop ok as long as you say it's not slop" policy was adopted. 100% of my attention span for that problem is currently tasked to "can I make a version of Servo with the pre-slop version of Harfbuzz"

mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social last wk.

RE: https://awoo.space/@noiob/117430472896097918

Hoping someone wrote down the last commit number before the ScummVM "slop ok as long as you say it's not slop" policy was adopted. 100% of my attention span for that problem is currently tasked to "can I make a version of Servo with the pre-slop version of Harfbuzz"