Comment on AI’s Unpaid Debt: How LLM Scrapers Destroy the Social Contract of Open Source

• vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I don’t see the point of romanticizing the scene as preserving some “pure” hacker ethos and conflating it with FOSS.

  No, but a bit more culturally mature in the sense of diversity of philosophy.

  FOSS creates sustainable value. Companies can build businesses around FOSS through services, support, hosting, and custom development. The scene creates nothing, they don’t promote standards, don’t think of interoperability and so on.

  So, if you just change the mood in these few sentences, you’ll get what I’m trying to say.

  The internet and the very service you’re using run on open source software. The people that build them have values and I don’t think at any point they thought of creating something for LLMs to train on - that’s like the dumbest conspiracy theory I’ve read since a long time and it doesn’t even make sense timeline-wise.

  You don’t think? I might have encountered some people you’d expect to be good. They are really not that. Let’s not conflate having values with having made contributions.

  The original FOSS licenses were designed to restrict corporate exploitation, not enable it (even if you have some more permissive licenses that make more sense to be used in a enterprise context), but it was promoted because it worked better and created value.

  Designed to do that at the expense of being constrained by law and public morality.

  Would you say the same thing to an artist that freely shared his art and see his work copied in the output of some generative ai tool? That would be victim-blaming

  Life is complex.

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  • gringoaleatorio@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    a bit more culturally mature in the sense of diversity of philosophy.

    More culturally mature in which ways? Very curious to read anything about it.

    Let’s not conflate having values with having made contributions.

    Yes sure, but a contribution is already a statement in itself. I don’t mind if the person is “not good”. I’d be tempted to answer you by quoting you (without attempting to make it cryptic or cynical): life is indeed complex. There’s like an infinity of viewpoints on why people contribute to foss, but I think if people do, it’s because they’re getting value out of it, and as a result, the whole community does. Most foss contributors mind that.

    Now if you keep alluding to deeper points without actually making them, I don’t see what I’d gain by continuing this conversation.

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    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      More culturally mature in which ways? Very curious to read anything about it.

      I think I’ve already said to that.

      Say, if someone is a very good programmer, that doesn’t mean they are better than a random drunk on any other subject.

      But in FOSS they usually assume otherwise.

      OK, it’s not scene being more mature than FOSS, it’s scene being normal and FOSS being less mature than in general.

      There’s like an infinity of viewpoints on why people contribute to foss, but I think if people do, it’s because they’re getting value out of it, and as a result, the whole community does. Most foss contributors mind that.

      Yes, well, that objective value direction is too a limitation. I’ve been reading one good book recently, still under impression (and probably will be for much longer). There are no good architects without bad architects, no good poetry without bad poetry, and no good contributions without bad contributions. And about usefulness for the whole community - a good system serves each and every use, not the majority use.

      Similar to inclusiveness, except it’s ideological and not racial\medical.

      In FOSS even something like PulseAudio or SystemD is spread by pressure. No, it really doesn’t matter which advantages they have in someone’s system of values or in all systems of values possible to describe. Only the pressure matters while it shouldn’t be there.

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