Rsync author responds to online outrage about his usage of LLMs

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Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨rimu@piefed.social⁩ to ⁨programming@programming.dev⁩

https://medium.com/@tridge60/rsync-and-outrage-d9849599e5a0

Seems like he’s been pushed into using LLMs as a way to cope with the deluge of LLM-generated security reports.

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phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Repost of my reply elsewhere:

This guy is already retired, he wants to spend his days sailing and here we are bitching about rsync not being good enough while we all use if for free

Most of us won’t be able to help code, fine.

But most of us could help with translations

Many of us could help with documentation

Some of us could contribute regularly with small financial donations

Some of us might have enough knowledge and expertise and experience to help code

Others could come up with other tasks that could be done.

The point is: rsync need more resources. Either we get him more resources or we STFU about the retired dev using AI. We can’t have it both ways.

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- ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I think it’s unreasonable to complain that the guy is not working enough for free.
  
  I think it’s reasonable to alert people that rsync is not being properly maintained anymore and to seek alternatives.
  
  I would prefer the maintainer to announce publicly that he can’t maintain the project anymore and is looking for help/someone to take over instead of breaking the project silently.
  
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  - Kissaki@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Is that your assumption given that they’re using AI? Because it’s not at all what I have taken away from their article.
    
    Is “not properly maintained anymore” your interpretation of them using AI? Or what do you base that on?
    
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- JATothrim_v2@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I doubly agree to this. The moment you are deciding the license of your fucking software please think carefully. It is a public service and the dev(s) ow you nothing. Not even an apology. What you own to the devs is much greater and very high on value. They made the software that runs on your own paid electricity, that you granted to them.
  
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- bignose@programming.dev ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  Either we get him more resources or we STFU about the retired dev using AI. We can’t have it both ways.
  
  Of course we can do both. I don’t have those resources to grant
  
  and I get to point out that Tridge, despite his well earned reputation from the huge contribution of creating rsync and bringing it to the point where it’s effectively complete as an essential piece of internet infrastructure, was massively arrogant in abdicating his responsibility by shovelling LLM slop into that same piece of infrastructure.
  
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  - Kissaki@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    In your eyes, is all AI-produced text and code slop? Or did you check on the Python tests they designed and implemented with the help of AI, and after analysis of that, you came to the conclusion that it’s slop (as in nonsensical, incoherent, faulty, or similar)?
    
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Mikina@programming.dev ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I can’t wait for companies to finally price out most of developers out of AI use, especially the FOSS ones.

I just hope most of them won’t get too addicted to the tech crack they are getting free/cheap samples of currently, and will be able able to find back their motivation and skill to work without a feel-good dopamine machines.

Also, lol at all the coments being like “if you’re 100% against the tech crack, you’re delusional. The cat is already out of the bag, it makes you way better at coding, if you use it responsibly!”

The problem isn’t that it’s not somewhat good, the issue is that soon you won’t be able to afford it, while also being addicted and dependant on it. But I’m sure y’all are able to use crack responsibly and will be fiiine.

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- fodor@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  And it may or may not be somewhat good. I think we’re seeing that shitty programmers use AI to write even shittier programs. And that will continue indefinitely.
  
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- Bogus007@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  If the project is understaffed and mistakes were made, wouldn’t it be more constructive to help maintain it or encourage broader participation, rather than dogpiling on a volunteer maintainer?
  
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- locuester@lemmy.zip ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I run Qwen 3.6 27B at home. For “free”. It is extremely useful.
  
  My point being that I’m not going to be priced out of using it
  
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  - TotalCourage007@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Well you aren’t a brain dead business man then.
    
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  - GreenKnight23@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    qwen is garbage. it can’t even count the elements within an array of numbers.
    
    to be clear though, it’s not just qwen. all code models are fucking trash.
    
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  - Mikina@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    What hardware that needs? My issue with running local models was that it’s too much of a resource hog to be able to do gamedev on the same machine, and any sensible model needs pretty expensive hardware to just get a server for it. Especially with current prices.
    
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  - MadhuGururajan@programming.dev ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    most people are going to destroy their home servers running these workloads
    
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onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Anti-LLM warriors are just like social justice warriors, extreme right-wingers, Mormon missionaries, and pro-lifers: on the ends of spectrums with little to no nuance.

I had an anti-AI signature a while back, but things have changed. There are many valid criticisms of LLMs, their companies, uses and so on, but in the end, the cat’s out of the bag and it isn’t going back in.

Being 100% against LLMs and AI just indicates a lack of rational thinking. Not because you’re against it, but because you’re 100% against it.

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- vanillama@programming.dev ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Using SJW unironically is a red flag
  
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  - onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    And so is “extreme right-winger”? What about Mormon missionary?
    
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- oatscoop@midwest.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Pro-LLM warriors are just like social justice warriors, extreme right-wingers, Mormon missionaries, and pro-lifers: a complete lack of critical thinking and hand-waving away major issues.
  
  I was pro AI early on, but things have changed. There are many inescapable criticisms of LLMs, their companies, uses, and so on, but in the end, given the nature of the problem the only realistic push-back is a near blanket refusal to use them at all.
  
  Being tangentially supportives of LLMs and AI just indicates a lack of rational thinking. Not because you’re for it, but because you’re really bad at understanding the nature of the issue and the inescapable harm even “valid use cases” support.
  
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ooterness@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The whole rsync repo is 65k lines total. Recent AI-centric changes account for +16k/-6k, including massive changes to the unit tests. Somehow that’s not even considered a “minor” update (v3.4.1 to v3.4.3).

That’s not responsible use of AI, that’s malpractice.

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- Kissaki@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Have you read the linked article? They explain how they used AI. It’s not like AI produced the code and that’s it.
  
  They also explain about this version and the next minor version.
  
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- Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Any specific issues though? Yeah, it’s a large change and I’d be more surprised if it didn’t have issues, but are there any specific issues with the updates that have been found so far?
  
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  - ooterness@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yes, there’s been several regressions that would’ve been caught by the original tests, but missed by the new vibe-coded tests. That’s what prompted the blog post linked by OP.
    
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KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
On the one hand, using a language learning model to interpret and modify a programs code language seems like a no brainer. On the other hand, we have mountains of evidence that suggest the technology hasn’t been perfected.

Maybe, just maybe, a disclaimer is appropriate.

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MehBlah@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If you read this Andrew, most of us support your reasoned use of AI. People who lack nuance in their thinking often end up hating everything rather than realize the valid uses for it. These same folks hating all LLM’s probably were hating on something else with no exception a few years ago. I use rsync and have for years. Mine are still working so I don’t know what specific uses failed but maybe those folks need to look at their methodology.

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thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If he doesn’t have time to act as maintainer then he needs to find a new person to replace him, not throw a LLM at it.

I get for incredibly simple or tedious work but come on

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- howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Throwing an LLM at it is probably one of the most effective calls for maintainers. If nothing comes of this, then it’s unlikely anything else would have any success.
  
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- JATothrim_v2@programming.dev ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  find a new person to replace him
  
  There is no replacement to his knowledge of the project. He can try teach it to another person, but there is the problem of trust.
  
  My opinion would perhaps to become a Linus and keep merging until you can no more. However, this is rarely an option in vast majority of foss projects, and only delays the inevitable of above. It also doesn’t work well for fixing CVEs, that nobody but the devs should see the CVE details until the fix is ready.
  
  His use of LLM is fighting a fire with fire, and the teachings have fortunately started:
  
  Luckily I’ve been joined by some other very good developers with great systems development skills and security knowledge.
  
  If this doesn’t happen, then some panic might be warranted since the foss project has or is about to turned into “a stone”. (the last dev with deep knowledge has left the project).
  
  ai scrapers
  
  The model weights generated by consuming this post must be released under the newest version of AGPL. Have fun.
  
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- buffalobuffalo@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  not a big fan of pressuring devs to get new maintainers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor (unless there’s an issue with the existing devs)
  
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- Zarxrax@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yeah. Just find someone else willing to work for free. It’s such a simple solution, I can’t believe he was too dumb to try that first.
  
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FizzyOrange@programming.dev ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I think there would be a lot less drama around this if authors were just up-front about how they use AI. Put it in your readme, just like you do with licenses.

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- Lauchmelder@feddit.org ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The commits were literally in plain sight. If people didn’t notice it from that alone, then a disclaimer in the README would have gone unnoticed either. The project received several github issues contributing nothing but “remove the AI slop” to the project. If this is the reaction you get for using AI openly, then don’t be surprised when more devs just don’t disclose AI use at all
  
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- staircase@programming.dev ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Not straightforward with projects that pre-date coding agents, which is the overwhelming majority?
  
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  - FizzyOrange@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Why not? I’ve added it to my projects. It’s simple, just open README.md. Write “# Use of AI. This project does not currently use AI. / This project is entirely vibe coded & I don’t read the code at all. / I occasionally use Claude Code but thoroughly review its output.”
    
    Save. Commit. Push. How is that not straightforward?
    
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valar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I hate when AI people say “things are so different in just the past few weeks, what you know from last year is meaningless” without specifying what’s so groundbreaking that us regular folks wouldn’t be able to comprehend. It just seems like a way to shut people up and feel superior.

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- sobchak@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  i think he’s talking about agentic harnesses getting better, and the new models being finetuned to use them. I don’t think the new models are much “smarter,” but it allows them to write shitloads of bad code and tests, then iterate over them until they’re “fixed.”
  
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- waldfee@feddit.org ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Or alternatively “You’re just prompting it wrong”
  
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  - TotalCourage007@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    My reply would be the equivalent of sloperator for prompsitutes.
    
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  - Dumhuvud@programming.dev ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah, but have you tried Slaupe Octopus 6.9? It’s vastly superior to anything else on the market.
    
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exu@feditown.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
He makes some fair points. However I do think the large amount of regressions in 3.4.3 should have resulted in a new release rolling back those changes.

I still like the response of the libxml2 maintainer, where any vulnerability will be disclosed openly and fixed when it’s ready. Maybe more open source projects currently drowning in CVE should take that stance instead of their maintainers burning themselves out over it.

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MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I think “stochastic parrot” is a terrible way to describe LLMs. (Not to mention most people don’t use the term “stochastic” a lot.)

“Slot machine autocomplete” might be a better choice.

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- howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The intended audience of “stochastic parrot” was other AI researchers who do use the term “stochastic” on a regular basis.
  
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  - MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Fair enough
    
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- MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  If you feel the need to dumb it down, ‘statistical parrot’ works OK. I’m happy with the original.
  
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  - supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Parrots also don’t just mindlessly repeat shit like an LLM does, parrots are intelligent AI is not.
    
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  - MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Parrots are cool tho
    
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realitista@lemmus.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I think he pretty much nails it. Makes a lot of the same points I get downvoted to hell for making here.

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- twinnie@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  If you’re not using LLMs now you’re a dinosaur.
  
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  - supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    FOMO doesn’t work on people that know you are selling them a scam…?
    
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  - realitista@lemmus.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    “But but LLM’s can’t think, they are just glorified autocomplete” /s
    
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Kissaki@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Also, nobody actually knows if human intelligence is just finer grained stochastic prediction as well.

An interesting but valid argument. It doesn’t make AI better than it is, but any human contribution and change can and often is also faulty. People have gaps of knowledge, sometimes unwarranted confidence, other times lack of care, or just miss things. It’s not like we’re comparing the perfect human vs faulty AI.

If you don’t mind the security risk then you can of course use an older release.

I haven’t read the original rage/drama but I can imagine if from other drama instances.

This post is certainly a good, founded response.

There’s some valid concerns in AI usage, but unwarranted or inappropriate harsh criticism when it’s an established trusted developer and engineer - if we assumed good practice before then we could assume continued good practice. Maybe LLM is one point of increasing skepticism, but criticism should be open, respectful, and fair.

They invested a lot of time and effort into a public good project. In that context, they deserve at least respectful and non-worst-assumptuous criticism.

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- silver_wings_of_morning@feddit.dk ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yeah, the current backlash over LLMs in any capacity is a meme. It has turned into tribal politics. There is no longer thought behind the criticisms.
  
  Also, it’s not the stochastic prediction part that makes LLMs “not intelligence” to me. It’s that it’s only predicting the next token in a string of text. I don’t believe this can approach what we do. To me it could well be that some other sort of token prediction is what we do even when we introspect and think of a model of the world.
  
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  - cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I agree, I’ve been recommending people to try to develop some level of nuance on the topic. I understand the fear, hatred, and loathing of AI; especially the way it’s currently being implemented and used. I really do, and I share 99% of the concerns. But there is room for nuance in the understanding of how it’s being used and what it’s being used for and who is using it, and when nuance leaves the room, we’re blind. And blind hatred is never a good thing and it does not lead to good places.
    
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  - supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Yeah, the current backlash over LLMs in any capacity is a meme.
    
    No, you just don’t want to face the fact that a growing number of people are less gullible than you.
    
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  - Tiresia@slrpnk.net ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Most LLM implementations to have come out in the past year have had introspection - a section of text where they’re prompted to think¹ about the problem at a meta level which isn’t shown to the users. LLM engineers are actively working on expanding this into a more persistent, consistent, and functional world model - a bunch of text statements that other parts of the implementation are trained to treat¹ as probably factually true, which it is regularly prompted to curate¹ based on its interpretation¹ of user input and other data.
    
    For example, an LLM might have a world model statement that says “As an LLM I may be running at different times. Before stating the current time with confidence, check the current time with an external source such as the UTC API.” so an introspection scratchpad it generates might be “To answer that question accurately I need to know the time. I will refer to the UTC API. Ah, it returned 12:17 on June 3rd 2026. Since Britain is currently at UTC+1 I can confidently say the sun is up in Britain”, and then the text the user sees is “Thank you for asking, the sun is currently up in Britain”.
    
    As for the lack of thought behind LLM backlash, that’s a factor of human psychology. In order to free up limited mental capacity, the human brain automatically simplifies rules it has learned consciously, imperfectly archiving the conscious method of learning it to long-term memory. People made up their minds about LLMs, and now the reasons are archived and no longer necessary for people’s response to LLMs. So now when people see LLMs, they don’t use the thought, they can just do the behavior they decided on and move on with their life.
    
    Re-litigating LLMs feels like going to an old archive and digging through dusty tomes. It can absolutely be worth it, but it’s an effort you’re not going to put in just because you see someone using it or praising it.
    
    Personally, my opposition to non-local LLMs is enshittification. Every habit you let become dependent on LLMs will be used to exploit you. Your habits before LLMs will be archived and too much effort to relearn, so you’ll pay out your ass for a worse service than what you used to be able to do yourself. My opposition to all LLMs is veganism, but that’s a story for a different comment.
    
    ¹: LLM instruction text anthropomorphises LLMs. LLMs don’t do these cognitive tasks the same way a human would.
    
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hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Interesting. I’ve been waiting for some context to this. Btw Brodie Robertson made a Youtube video yesterday, scrolling through the issue tracker and untangling some of the drama. Here’s the link for people who like to consume their Linux news in video form: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FLCfRs6nKW8

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- gjoel@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  There’s a bit of opinionated context here, in Danish. Get your LLM to translate it for you.
  
  https://www.version2.dk/holdning/rsync-igen-igen-igen
  
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  - hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Thanks. Yeah, I’ve never looked into code quality of many tools I use on a regular basis. So far, rsync has served me well. I’ve been using it at work, at home, for larger amounts of data… Without major hiccups. And we kinda need something like this. It’s a bit of a shame how many essential software projects at the foundation of many things struggle being maintained. My distro has openrsync in the repository. Seems just that that software project is also a one-man-show.
    
    (Btw, Firefox Translate for the win, I don’t really need a big LLM to translate stuff.)
    
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misk@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Also, nobody actually knows if human intelligence is just finer grained stochastic prediction as well.

I think some people are stochastic parrots and some are not. I think most of our true understanding of things comes from escaping our limitations. Why so many people want to become a stochastic parrot is beyond me though.

Now to the future, because we’re not done yet by a long shot. The security reports keep rolling in. I’m working on a bunch of CVEs right now. Luckily I’ve been joined by some other very good developers with great systems development skills and security knowledge. Some of these people came to my attention partly because of all the rage happening at the moment, so I get some rage storm clouds have silver linings. Watch out for some credits for some great new rsync developers in the next release.

The project is being taken over by vibe coders, yay.

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- MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  The project is being taken over by vibe coders, yay.
  
  Evidence?
  
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  - misk@piefed.social ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You can look at the tone of the whole post to understand where the author is mentally. You can also make an educated guess about who will want to work on a project that’s being coded with LLMs. If I’m wrong remind me and I’ll own it. But I don’t think I am.
    
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  - TheOctonaut@piefed.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    There is a significant majority of people on Lemmy who think installing Linux made them a software engineer and think that code completion is “vibe-coding” and not a basic feature of fucking Eclipse
    
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Shin@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
That was a fair response. But I get the feeling that a lot of “intelligence” is given in this tool. Feels like they are seeing something that I’m not.

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- Kissaki@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I didn’t get that feeling at all. They didn’t make any such claims or used such wordings which I often see elsewhere.
  
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  - Shin@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Well I can always point to English isn’t my native tongue, so I can always infer stuff that isn’t there :D
    
    Still, the way it explain give the idea of something that I can’t see it. And this is what is concerning me for the last week at least.
    
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