Just seeing the list here: https://codeberg.org/small-hack/open-slopware
I don't know what to think about it, many incredible open-source projects went downhill, some worse than others, full AI permission usage and some of them even advertise AI providers on README.md. I'm even using many of them myself.
Even the good guys are falling, I'm not sure what to think about it. Am I overreacting maybe?
You might think, that's fine, not a big deal, some of them just allow AI usage, but not AI generated code, but for how long? If you allow use of AI for anything the tendency is that you'll be even more open about it in the future.
List of projects that personally draw my attention or I use eventually:
- Firefox: not unexpected, but still, I had hope on Mozilla bring more tech awareness on mainstream
- Spaceship prompt: I use this on my terminal for customization, why'd you need AI for such a simple project?
- VLC: just sad
- curl: sad x 10
- Vim: sad x 20
- zoxide: they literally promoting AI providers in the README, such a simple tool as well, why?
- CoMaps/Organic Maps/OsmAnd: the few ones providing a good alternative to Google Maps
- Element: that's literally the most used client for Matrix I guess?
- Python: I thought they were the good guys as well
- Lemmy: unexpected, code of conduct says it's allowed
- Linux: the final boss, unbelievable
Is there any hope at all? Or am I just overreacting?
curl is definitely NOT writing code with AI if you follow the newsletter. And wget will never be a valid alternative to curl if you know what they both do. You can safely remove it from the list.
I feel like you can't just look to see if a piece of software is on the list and immediately decide it's the devil. Having spent a lot of time reading the list, and reading the links provided as sources for several of the bits of software I use, the barrier to get your project on that list is pretty low. As an example that I can remember, one dev basically said "I can't police with 100% accuracy if someone used an LLM or not. I expect every submission to be able to be explained by the human that submitted it fully and it'd be nice if people disclosed when they use an LLM." The list marks that project as "Permissive AI Policy".
I don't love that this is where we are, but if you think you are going to use a computer and do anything particularly useful with it and avoid 100% anything that may have ever been touched by an LLM, you are unfortunately going to struggle significantly. I appreciate the list greatly, as it does link to its receipts. It allows us to look at a project and read their policies and decide a little bit quicker than doing all the work ourselves. I don't think I can legitimately stand up and say "if it is on the list, I won't use it" however.
I am personally a fan of
xhover curl. Simple syntax IMO.