From the article: "This release also introduces Anthropic and Grok backends for Claude and Grok models.
(...)

Coming three weeks after Calibre 9.13, the Calibre 9.14 release is here to introduce more AI features, including the ability to generate book covers using AI with different cover styles such as romance, sci-fi, pulp fiction, etc., as well as Anthropic and Grok backends for Claude and Grok models, while removing the GitHub backend."

I don't have it installed at the moment but wonder how easily you can disable that stuff.

Previously it said the AI stuff is optional and doesn't start doing anything until you configure it. It's disabled by default.

Uuu, an integrated slop reader?

why

It'll even read the books for you so it can write more books you don't have to read.

why

• why get up in the morning, only to have to do it again tomorrow?

• why paint a still life, when you can just stare at the real thing for a while?

• why not hunt and forage your own food?

• why not make your own clothes?

• why write boring code, when you can get someone or something else to write it for you?

• why contribute features that you think are interesting to a product that you use and enjoy?

• why post on social media, rather than doing any of the above?

I loved Calibre before all the AI stuff. I've decided to fork the project and gut out all of the AI features. I'm tenatively calling it Calibre- (Calibre minus) just for the giggles. Not sure if other people care about this or not, but an AI-gutted calibre is coming.

Interesting. Please let us know about your project once it's ready.

Calibre fork withou AI and fully Qt based when?

https://github.com/grimthorpe/clbre

Thanks for this and I see arcalibre too. I’m a bit worried that neither have updated in a number of months now, but I’ll see if I can help out there before continuing on with my own thing.

Gross, well I guess I can look at some of the forks and see if they are less disgusting.

Most of these "project-but-without-" forks tend to be abandoned rather quickly unfortunately. Maintaining compatibility with a large codebase that is not yours is not the fun part of software development.

I would say clbre and arcalibre are already abandoned, looking at the activity on these repos (none in clbre, and issues/PRs piling up in arcalibre). If you can envision yourself still dedicating your time to this endeavor 5 years from now, you might as well move forward with your own thing.

I mean, that's a good point, but it's a fundamental part of the Fee part of FOSS. I don't "see" myself doing anything 5 years from now but it doesn't necessarily mean it wouldn't be worth the effort. But you also have a good point. They do seem dead, and I don't want to add another dead project on top of the others. But I am pretty serious about having calibre-like thing that won't incorporate AI. Does that mean I should start a new thing, or quasi-robinhood calibre into a new thing. I don't know yet, but I do get your point.

I might have phrased that badly with the 5 years thing. Obviously no one doing open source owes anyone else their time or effort. I do think that projects which stay afloat for a significant amount of time are those where the maintainers keep using the software for their own purpose.

In any case, I wish you good luck with that project, and might become a user if it comes to fruition too.

Yeah, I get what you mean. And thanks. I'm going to give the rereading Project a chance to respond to my message, but after a few days I'm going to move forward. I've already gutted the AI features, I just need to fix what yanking that out broke and then fix the ui.

If you’re into self hosting at all check out caliber-web, which uses a calibre-compatible db/backend but a web-based fronted. I switched about 3 years ago after importing my old calibre db and never looked back (household is doing around 90 books/year)

I'll checkout Calibre-web. It seems like it does a lot of what I need it to do!

How do these people not vomit looking at ai slop images? I don't understand. I'd rather spend a few minutes searching for an image I like than generate it. It makes no sense to me.

It's not a feature, it's a bug.

Oh. I guess that explains why I just spent half a day debugging its installation on my server.

They do vomit but they aren't aware why. Look how people live in concrete boxes, surrounded by CARS, asphalt and plastics. All vomit friendly. Yet they persist. They don't know themselves.

I think you should call it Librarian.

These are all optional features for people who want to use them.

why the fuck would you want an AI generated book cover

How am I supposed to know?
And what's with the language? Are you right in the head? Get therapy maybe.

Edit: Just reread my comment and should have clarified I meant "you" as in third person not you in particular

I already understand that part.
I am more concerned about your use of profanity.