Software Freedom Conservancy

@conservancy LOL WTF NOPE.

"FOSS projects should not shun contributors who choose to use LLM-gen-AI systems."

🤡

@dalias @conservancy kinda stopped reading after

“There are many intersecting ethical and moral issues regarding these systems, many of which are not currently fully understood.”

They are well understood and visible.

@conservancy I'm going to state this very clearly:

Projects/communities have an absolute right to exclude people whose behaviors they deem unethical, unsafe, or hostile from participation.

And deeming LLM-gen-AI use as unethical is a completely reasonable position.

@conservancy Ok. With that statement, what exactly is SFC "conserving"? The right to use, and not be ridiculed for using, unethical slop in FOSS?

@conservancy

There is less said on the BitKeepering of project tooling wrt process; the difference between toleration, blessing (i.e. tutorials) and requiring; the use of these tools to do reviews themselves; and the nature of using them for social interactions in exchanges, and a special treatment for english-washing for people embarrassed by their English proficiency. And obviously reputational harms.

But it's a step in clarity on the SFC's position. If a touch narrow for me personally.

Yeah. The most generous reading would be that they mean "don't bully people or act like a jerk, just gently close their contribution and invite them to contribute in other ways"

Though I did also read it the other way too.

As for "are not currently fully understood" this is code for "we can't say what they are without offending some of our projects" a diplomatic retreat from having a position or making a conclusion.

@rotnroll666 @dalias @conservancy

@conservancy encouraging and supportimg LLM slop is contrary to the very idea of free software

@doctormo @dalias @conservancy 👀 indeed.

The rest is not so bad tbf.

@dalias @conservancy oh yes they should

@conservancy you are just 🤡

@rotnroll666 @doctormo @conservancy It's way too much weasel language, concessions to AI-slop interests, and phrasing that can be weaponized by the slop proponents against us for DARVO antics. A good version of this document would have been less than 10% of the length and valued people who create not industry and abuser interests.

@dalias @conservancy I still remember the exchange you had with that UX guy that criticized Fedi for not gaining traction, and then questioned *your* *personal* power to judge if something is right or wrong. These people cannot envision a world in which a community coalesces around a limit they deem important, and fully rejects something. They don't respect agency, unless it's a corporation's, in which case they just let it do whatever they want, kind of an extension of the "they must be right if they got all that moneu and power" kind of thinking.

@conservancy i would really like to see a stronger stance against these dehumanization machines, honestly..

@dalias @conservancy I'm all for shunning such "contributors" even harder. And ridiculing, there should probably also be some ridiculing.

@ticho @dalias @conservancy Fingerpointing.

@jens @dalias @conservancy I was thinking more something along the lines of The Simpsons' Nelson Muntz, but yours works too.

@conservancy LLMs are fundamentally incompatible with free software. This should be your entire policy statement.

@conservancy "thoughtful and ethical use of LLM tooling" is a double contradiction, this is disappointing

@conservancy

1 and 2 are good, and it's good they are first.

3 reeks of false equivalence and doesn't argue against any of the very compelling arguments in "Contributor Poker and AI". Cf. https://kristoff.it/blog/contributor-poker-and-ai/. And it ignores the moral axis of the argument, which is often paired with false equivalence to reach the conclusion "good must tolerate evil" which is absurd.

4 seems nice in theory, but again see "Contributor Poker". We can wish people be intentional, but these systems inherently make drive-by contributions possible. It feels like you are trying to argue this is a neutral technology with respect to contributions which is absurd. The spam machine makes spam.

Agree on 5.

6 sure, ok, see 4. Same for 7.

8 seems weak and poorly argued. If legal issues are unresolved, then this implies more caution should be used. You can say "avoid jumping to conclusions" but ultimately we need to make decisions about how to act now, as this is happening now.

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/116771184567572781

@conservancy 9 seems irrelevant. Those will power will take what they want, those without power will be taken from.

10, yeah, I still think it's important to take the stance too. I like the idea of copyleft. The moral obligation of what we owe to each other. Taking care of and giving back to the commons.

1. Feckless and ignorant.

2. Waste of time. Garden or actually make something useful instead of wasting time on the gambling spam machine.

3. Pointless charm against evil. Like throwing salt over your shoulder. You don't just get to say "I'm going to be immune to propaganda or influence or bias". It takes constant, active effort, and STILL FAILS. See what happened with this comic: https://tech.lgbt/@cwebber@social.coop/116771185279004637

4. Like 13, also feckless. 14 summarizes the complete lack of integrity and leadership and willingness to tackle the actual problems which are the social, ethical, and moral ones, not the technological ones.

@conservancy > ethical use of LLM tooling

Not possible.

@conservancy Do you also recommend that people eat rocks? Do you have any guidelines for putting rocks on pizza?

@conservancy All in all, this reads like someone who's trying not to upset anyone, rather than understanding the moral imperative and taking a firm stance.

It's shameful and embarrassing, honestly, and I hope one day whoever thought this fit to publish understands why.

@conservancy point and laugh, children. point and laugh.

@dalias @conservancy I do understand your point that the way LLMs were sourced and their power dynamics are at least problematic. Still there might come a time when we all will struggle to identify LLM code. This is the point where bad code, written by humans, might be confused with LLM code and real humans get blamed for using LLMs. I think realistically it well be more helpful to disallow or discourage huge PRs and bad code. I am not happy about that but it seems more realistic to me.

@chris @conservancy Um, fuck no. Just because we can't 100% reliably identify hostile and unethical behavior doesn't mean we just say "doing that is fine". The statement of values is the point. If there are shitty people who get a kick out of violating our consent, they will demonstrate themselves that in other ways too, and we will remove them.

@conservancy let’s make this perfectly clear.

Fuck all the way off.

And when you get there fuck off some more.

The less-nuanced version of this statement is still in preparation.

@dalias @conservancy Don't misunderstand me. I don't have anything against disallowing AI in your project.I just think that it might be like fighting windmills. I am fairly certain that I can create an LLM assisted PR that you will not be able to detect because I can actually write good code.

I just think it's sad if we started mistrusting each other over LLMs. It's okay to ban commits clearly marked as LLM generated. If not I'd rather assume it's a human.

@dalias @conservancy @wyatt honestly define "shun" tbh, because according to ai bros having a policy of lije " please dont use this here " is shunning them, when typically that is not what that would mean, im inclined more to think along the lines of .. "your bad for using this" or .. "if you use this then your ..." when i hear that; which is something else

@wyatt @conservancy @Li I will "shun" them in the sense of recommending against using (especially depending on) other projects by them or in which they are heavily involved, speaking publicly about/against their attempts to normalize "AI" use, etc.

I will deem hall-of-shame/shitlists of slop coders as legitimate and non-abusive, and will happily share them.

If someone thinks any of this is "poor conduct"/a violation of their principles of how we should engage with "AI"/a violation of their code of conduct, they can get fucked.

@azonenberg

On the contrary - if the indications hold that the output from LLMs are not copyrightable that means that LLM produced software has the equivalence of the Creative Commons Zero license, e.g. public domain.

That's how I started releasing software I wrote back in the 80s and I most definitely consider that to have been free software.

@conservancy

@troed @azonenberg @conservancy Surely you realize the copyright issue isn't the only one at play here?

@dalias @wyatt @conservancy im not sure what i actually think about this, so i wont comment much on this

i was just pointing out theres two completey different meanings here;

i would like to ig mention that having a list of "bad coders" has an issue of making it difficult to be accepted back if they stop using them.. which is presumably what you would want them to do .. (this is an issue with blocklists in general though.. tbh)

im not sure what i think of it outside of acknowleding a single issue with some of this though

@camertron

What other issue do you consider relevant for whether LLMs are incompatible with free software?

@azonenberg @conservancy

@wyatt @conservancy @Li Yeah. Abusers are never entitled to being accepted-back, especially not by the party they've abused or other parties who have a duty not to make an unsafe environment for the parties they've abused.

If someone is going to be accepted-back, they need to have done the work to undo or compensate for the harms they caused and demonstrate commitment to change. Not just say "I changed my mind! I'm not bad anymore!"

@troed @azonenberg @conservancy
So you're saying it _is_ a copyright-washing machine? Train it on copyleft code and get CC0 out.

@azonenberg what are your arguments for that opinion?

There is popular Free Software with LLM-generated code, like Linux and systemd. They don't become closed-source or explode, so your statement is not obviously true.

Would it change your opinion when an LLM would be ethically trained and more reliable?

@conservancy

@dalias @conservancy I'm sorry if this came out as a threat. It was not meant as such. What I mean is that I'm confident that I could and that leaves me to believe that a lot of other people might as well. At that point you get to a cat and mouse game where some innocent people might get caught in the crossfire. If there was a surefire way for you to block LLM code I'd support that even. More power to you. What I fear is that we all will just be ever more angry, frustrated and distrustful.

@wyatt @conservancy @Li OTOH if someone is *privately* using "AI" tools for non-codegen purposes, not pushing others to engage with any of that, and being exceedingly cautious to disclose anything that might be unacceptable or tainting to any projects they engage with, I'm not going to shame them.

I'm going to thank them for being decent and respecting our consent even if I deem the tools they're using unethical and harmful.

@troed @azonenberg @conservancy The SFC describes themselves as "a nonprofit organization centered around ethical technology." LLMs are inherently an unethically-made technology. The number of individual ethical concerns is enormous.