Direct link to the LLM Policy Discussion: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/work_items/187
Example of a KDE dev not wanting environmental concerns to play any role, despite KDE having an environmental project:
Devs rejecting any notion of transparency by disclosing AI usage in code submissions (in direct opposition to advice from the FSFE):
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.
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
crime won’t happen because it is illegal?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You have no idea if they copy pasted proprietary code either, but you try your best to keep it out.
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.