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521 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 9h \ parent \ on: Add question about AI usage to PR template by ekzyis · Pull Request #2507 devs
I liked this policy proposal on forgejo.
In general, I glance over every pull request and I prioritize by cleanliness. I did that before AI too: if you throw slop of any source over the wall, then you gotta wait.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek OP 9h
Thanks for the link, very interesting!
For example, I hate reading stuff like this, lol:
FOSS projects that have accepted the use of AI contributions (or integrated AI features) have not been received well within the FOSS community
Why does it matter how something is "received"?
This is a technical discussion, it should be based on technical merits.
And usually, "community" just means social media, not sure how many of them are really FOSS developers.
But I guess I should understand that it makes sense to mention. (?)
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 7h
I hate reading stuff like this
Me too, but in this case I mostly ignored the hippie rationale. The basic rules proposed make sense, i.e. proposed rule 1-4. Emphasis mine:
  1. If content was made with the help of AI, you must convey that this is the case. This includes content that you authored but was motivated by a suggestion of AI.
This is basically the same thing you propose.
  1. If at any point you used AI's work in your contribution you must demonstrate that you can submit this under the license of the repository.
This means you likely can't use code generated under another ToS (i.e. that of Claude or GPT), but this is a non-AI thing too, so it should technically not be AI-specific.
  1. The accountability of using AI in a contribution lies by the person that makes that contribution.
Very nice liability limiter, but shouldn't this be the case on all code?
  1. All communication, that includes: commit messages, pull request messages, documentation, code comments and issues (and comments on issues/pull requests), that is intended to be read by people to understand your thoughts and work must not have been generated with AI. We exclude machine translation and tooling that helps with grammar and spelling check.
This is imho the most important point socially. If you want me to read something, make it so that I want to read it, but again: this is not AI-specific. 1
The other items are not something I'd encourage on a non-niche project, but I guess it's fine for those among us that want to cater not to the world, but to their faction. You have to trust humanity to develop for the world.
I've for a longer time been playing with the idea to improve contribution guidelines based on something like this, but I keep getting back to the point that AI should at most be an example for illustration, not a rule.
Why does it matter how something is "received"?
I do think that they have a point as many people that move away from GH nowadays do so because of copilot skepticism - GitHub went all-in on AI, so the alternatives should be careful. The AI fearful/skeptics need a "home" too (though I'd argue it's much nicer to be homeless / squatting across all platforms, and this also helps against cults.) 2 But bottom line this is more marketing / politics.
"community" just means social media
Agreed. Especially since on many of these platforms you're not allowed to comment on an issue "wtf is this shit", because that will get you instabanned for life, lol.

Footnotes

  1. I've for a longer time now been blessed with proper CI on my repos (after I spent years to have that) so I have largely switched my mode in day-to-day review to spend a lot of time on comment and commit quality. It is not for a reason that on my projects I am the most hated maintainer (but also the most senior so tough luck lol) ↩
  2. Unfortunately the politics of many of these alternative platforms, including codeberg, are very inclusivity-and-safety focused - I wouldn't run a meaningful FOSS repo under their CoC, because those rules can be weaponized and selectively enforced. ↩
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